Something About Emmaline (25 page)

“Emmaline, why? Why are you already married?”

She looked away. “There is nothing we can do about it now.”

“We’ll see about that. I’m not about to give up on…” He paused and looked at her. “I intended for us to be married tonight.”

She looked away, tears stealing into her eyes. “Oh, Sedgwick.”

“I thought we agreed you would call me by my given name.”

She shook her head. “I have no right.”

“You have every right,” he told her. “And you’ll call me that soon enough. When we are married.”

“But how?”

“Perhaps this Hawthorne is dead, and you are free of him.”

“An answer to many a prayer, that would be,” she told him, laying her head on his shoulder.

“If not, there must be some incongruity in your marriage that could be used to have it annulled. Elliott, my solicitor, is a master for finding just the right hole in any coil.”

Emmaline looked up at him. “You’d do all that for me?”

He nodded. “That and more.”

“But my past, it will forever haunt me. There will always be people like the Neeleys who remember Miss Doyle, or like Dingby…There will be no escaping the scandal. Let me leave now, Sedgwick. It is for the best.” Her words, bravely spoken, tore from her heart. She didn’t want to leave him, but to stay would be his ruin. She loved him too much not to flee.

“Emmaline, I have no intention of letting you go. Besides, I’ve never been overly fond of London, and I think you’ll find the rooms at Sedgwick Abbey will keep you well occupied for many a year.” He toyed with one of her curls. “So let there be no more talk of your leaving. Do you hear me?”

She nodded, but wasn’t as yet convinced.

Go.
She should go, leave him and let him live his life without her. And yet, what if he was correct and there was a way for them to be together?

Dingby returned just then, and Emmaline’s head snapped up.

The former highwayman eyed her first, then the baron, standing so close as they were, his brows furrowing with something akin to paternal displeasure. And she knew what that meant. She moved out of Sedgwick’s shadow.

Grand! All she needed was Dingby coming to the wrong conclusions. He might not be able to shoot straight, but that didn’t mean the fellow had forgotten how to fire a pistol.

“Your man brought this around,” he said, coming between her and Sedgwick. Handing her the bundle of clothes, the cagey old man shot the baron a pointed look. “His lordship and I will leave you to get yourself done up, Button.”

She winked at Sedgwick, and said to her old friend, “Have you anything to drink around here, Dingby? I believe Sedgwick could use a drink. He’s had quite an enlightening evening.”

“That and something else,” the old man muttered. “This way, milord. The duke keeps a rare port in stock, and though I’m under strict orders not to let Lord John know about it, I don’t think he’ll mind you having a glass of it.”

Sedgwick looked from her to Dingby and back to her. “You’ll stay here?”

Was it hope she heard in his voice? That he wanted her to stay? She’d rather thought her offer to leave might be met with relief.

“I’ll be here,” she told him. As much as she was tempted to flee into the night and avoid coming face to face with his Grandmère, she’d given her word.

“Come along then, milord,” Dingby said in his best butler tones.

Emmaline pulled off her costume, wiping her face free of the ash and talc mixture she’d used to dull her coloring. There was a mirror over the mantel, so she was able to put her hair in some semblance of order, using the few pins she had at hand.

Luckily the dress Thomas had retrieved was one of her more simple gowns. Obviously he’d gotten one of the maids to help him. She pulled it on, but realized she needed someone to help her with the laces in the back.

She went over to the door to see if there was a maid about, when she heard Dingby’s gruff voice.

“What are your intentions with her, my lord?”

“My what?”

“Your intentions, I say. Button is right important to me, and I won’t see her being…being—”

“Mr. Birdwell, rest assured the situation is not what you think. Emmaline, or rather Button, is my life. In fact, I intend to see that she is protected and cared for.”

“Harrumph,” Birdwell muttered. “See that you do. I owe her father my life. Why, there was this time on the North Road when he and I were—”

Egads, no,
Emmaline thought. That was the last thing she wanted Sedgwick to find out. She pushed the door open and put a bright expression of surprise on her face, as if she hadn’t expected to find them there. “Heavens, I fear I need some help.” She might have fooled the baron, but Dingby was anything but—he gave her a dark glare, the one that had gained him the nickname the Scourge of Norwich. She ignored him and blithely smiled at Sedgwick, then tilted her head toward her shoulder. “I can’t reach the ties in the back. Could you help me?”

She turned her back to Sedgwick and shot Dingby her own hot glance.

The old man shook his finger at her. “Button, I’ll have my say on this.”

“Not and live, Dingby Michaels.”

“Bloody hell,” he muttered. Then he glanced up at Sedgwick. “Never should have taught the gel to shoot a pistol.”

“So I have you to blame for the hole in my wall,” Sedgwick said.

Birdwell snorted. “Be thankful that hole isn’t in your breeches, milord.”

A
lex and Emmaline entered the Sedgwick town house via the kitchen, but just as she was about to make her way quietly up the back stairs, a distinct voice rang out from the hallway beyond.

“She is not upstairs and neither is my grandson. Now, I intend to search this house from top to bottom until I get some answers.” The door to the kitchen swung open and Genevieve, Lady Sedgwick, made her grand entrance. She stopped short and Simmons nearly ran into her as he came to a blustering halt. Around their feet, her dogs trotted obediently, looking from one person to another to see if anyone had remembered their midnight snack.

“Grandmère, there you are,” Sedgwick said, as if he’d been searching her out.

She held up her lorgnette. “And where have you been?”

“Fetching me, your ladyship,” Emmaline said, rushing in as usual.

Alex flinched, and said a hasty prayer that Emmaline’s spontaneous explanation would have nothing to do with highwaymen.

He’d had his fair share of cardsharps and gentlemen of the road this evening.

“I am so sorry, but the confusion is all my fault,” she said. “Lady Rawlins wasn’t feeling well earlier and I left in a hurry to go sit with her.” Emmaline leaned forward. “She’s been rather weak since her confinement.”

“As well she should be. Wretched business, childbirth,” his grandmother announced. “But here you are, our Emmaline.” She gave her a quick once-over and then drew her into her arms for a hearty embrace. What she whispered to Emmaline, he couldn’t hear, but from the smile on his grandmother’s face, all was forgiven. She took Emmaline’s arm and began to pull her from the kitchen. “Now we can see about a good coze. I have so much to learn about you—”

“Grandmère, I believe that can wait for morning,” Alex told her.

“Nonsense,” she replied. “I’ve waited all these years to meet your dearest Emmaline and I am not going to be put off now.”

But before she could make good her threat to spirit Emmaline away, the door opened and in came Lady Lilith and Hubert.

“There you are—” Lady Lilith said, her face flushed and angry, her finger pointing accusingly at Emmaline.

The pugs responded by barking wildly and growling at Mrs. Denford.

The tall, narrow woman shot a black look down her long nose and snapped down at them, “Be still, you ruinous pests.”

The pugs turned their tiny tails and ran behind their mistress’s wide skirt.

Lady Lilith barely broke stride as she spun her ire back at her original victim. “I blame you for all this, Emmaline Denford.” She drew herself up. “Too sick to attend the opera with my mother. Utter rubbish! You rudely avoided my mother’s kind invitation and sent that wolf, that debaucherous—”

“I beg your pardon,” Alex began. “I am not—”

“Oh, do be quiet,” Lady Lilith snapped, completely forgetting herself. “This isn’t about your rudeness, but I’ll get to that in a moment.” Before he could say another word, she was off and running again. “I blame you for this evening’s disaster,” she said, her narrow finger stabbing the air again. “I wouldn’t doubt it if you had planned this all along, sending Lord John in your stead, if only to ensure that he ruined my brother’s one chance at happiness.”

“Lord John?” Emmaline asked. “I only suggested—”

“Of course you did. How innocent it all appeared when you conveniently fell ill this afternoon and were able to beg off going. Sending that viper into our midst.”

Alex narrowed his gaze at Lady Lilith, a sneaking feeling overcoming him. “What did Jack do?”

“What did he do? What didn’t he do?” she cried out, nearly hysterical. “He ruined Miss Mabberly, that’s what he did.”

“He what?” Alex and Emmaline both exclaimed at once.

Hubert intervened and finished the story. “Right after you left, Sedgwick, Lady Oxley went out to find Miss Mabberly, only to discover her in a compromising position with Lord John. Apparently he had his hand—”

“Hubert! Do not say it!” Lady Lilith protested. “Don’t force me to relive that awful moment.”

“Unfortunately, Lilith saw it as well,” Hubert whispered loudly in an aside.

“Yes, I did,” his wife sputtered. “When Mother started screaming I immediately went to her aid. There was Lord John, in a terrible state, drunk, with his hand upon Miss Mabberly’s…Miss Mabberly’s…”

“Breast,” Hubert finished.

Lady Lilith shot him a dark glance. “Her person,” she corrected. “Mother found them kissing. If only that was the worst of it, for however can my poor brother marry her now? Not when her true nature has been revealed to all. Wretched, awful girl!” She turned again on Emmaline. “This is all your fault, your influence. You told her to do this, you told her to throw off Oxley by—”

“That is quite enough,” Alex said, stepping between Emmaline and Lady Lilith. “My wife did no such thing. I heard every word of what she said to Miss Mabberly the other night and never once did Emmaline suggest that Miss Mabberly ‘throw off’ your brother.”

“Harrumph!” Lady Lilith sputtered. “I still hold you responsible, Cousin Emmaline. If you had gone tonight, done your duty as Sedgwick’s wife and appeared with him at the opera, none of this would have happened. Oxley is bereft over his loss.”

Bereft for his loss of Miss Mabberly’s dowry,
Alex thought. “Perhaps not all is so dire,” he suggested instead. “I could go talk with Jack. Perhaps there was a misunderstanding, and it could be smoothed over.”

“A misunderstanding? He had his hand on her breast!” Lady Lilith exclaimed. And once she realized that she’d said the word aloud, in front of both him and Hubert, she colored a dark shade of red.

“That does sound a bit dire,” Alex agreed. Oh, damn Jack and his drunken ways. What the devil had he been thinking, kissing Miss Mabberly? Then he remembered his friend’s words.
Pretty little redhead.
A pretty little redhead?

Oh, demmit, he must have mistaken Miss Mabberly for his dancing light-o’-love.

“I will see to this in the morning,” Alex promised. “I’ll call on Jack and have him apologize to Miss Mabberly. I believe he might have mistaken her for someone else. Quite an honest mistake, and surely when Oxley hears the explanation and Jack compensates him for the situation, he can see his way clear to carry on with his marriage to Miss Mabberly.”

“Marry that tart? Never! Mother was right about her all along. I say good riddance to her and her tawdry dowry.”

With that Lady Lilith turned to her husband. “Come, Mr. Denford, I am all but worn to a fray.” Then she marched upstairs, but not before shooting Emmaline one more haughty and aggrieved look.

Hubert shrugged his shoulders, then followed his wife to their room.

Once they were well and gone, his grandmother launched right back into her litany as if they’d never been interrupted. “Come now,” she said, wrapping her arm around Emmaline’s and starting to draw her toward the sitting room.

Just then the clock chimed the hour, and Alex used it to his advantage. “Grandmère,” he said, quickly cutting in and separating the pair of them. “Can you not see that Emmaline is already in a weakened state? You wouldn’t be so cruel as to keep her from her rest at this late hour? I would hate to see you be responsible for setting off another of her relapses.”

His grandmother’s gaze narrowed. “She looks well enough to me. In fact, I think—”

“Oh, I disagree,” he interjected. “Emmaline is quite fatigued. Aren’t you, dearest?”

Emmaline glanced from him to his grandmother, and for a moment he almost doubted that she was going to join in his fiction. She looked torn—but how could that be? Surely the last thing she wanted was this interview with his grandmother, and certainly not before he had a chance to finish briefing her on the letters his solicitor’s wife had written over the past three years.

But then to his relief, she sighed heavily and sagged against him. “How right you are, Sedgwick. I feel terribly dizzy.”

Alex played his part of doting husband by hoisting her into his arms. “Play along with me,” he whispered into her ear, “and I shall make it up to you for the rest of the night.” Then he glanced up at his grandmother. “As you can see, Emmaline is in no condition for your interview. Tomorrow will suffice.”

At which time, he would have Emmaline spirited away, well and far from his grandmother’s prying.

“Goodnight, Grandmère,” he said as he began carrying Emmaline up the stairs.

Much to his chagrin, his grandmother followed. Right on his heels, like one of her pesky pugs looking for a sweet.

“What are you thinking, Alexander?” she protested. “Where are you taking her?” as he turned off on the second landing.

“Our suite,” he said over his shoulder. He would have thought he’d told her that he was going to toss Emmaline from the window by the way she reacted.

“You can’t do that!” she protested. “That is entirely inappropriate!”

Alex stopped, and suddenly a hint of suspicion niggled at him. He glanced down at Emmaline and she quickly closed her eyes, feigning a swoon. Not that he expected Emmaline and her cardsharp ways would give anything away.

So he turned around and faced his grandmother, who looked ready to panic.

“And why, Grandmère, is it inappropriate for my
wife
to spend the night in my
bed
?” He made sure he emphasized those words, and for good reason—she flinched at both of them.

“Well, because…because…” she stammered. “She’s ill!” she said, pointing her gnarled finger at Emmaline. “She’ll never get the rest she needs with you there. Place her in the Rose Room, where she belongs.”

“But Grandmother, that has always been your room, and Emmaline and I wouldn’t think of forcing you from your favorite chamber. Isn’t that right, darling?” he asked Emmaline, giving her a good heft to rouse her.

She opened one eye and used it to gauge his intent. She didn’t even dare look at the dowager. “Um, yes,” she said. “We couldn’t do that.”

He smiled at his grandmother. “There you have it. Now my wife and I are going to bed. That is, unless you have something else to say, Grandmère?”

“I—I—” his grandmother protested, then snapped her lips shut and shook her head.

Alex nodded to her and marched into the master suite. He made a great show of tossing Emmaline onto the bed and then turning to face his grandmother. After shooting his shocked relation a saucy wink, he said, “Goodnight, Grandmère. Sleep well.” And then he closed the door firmly and
threw the bolt so there would be no interruptions.

If she had any further protests, he cared not, not now that he knew exactly who was behind Emmaline’s arrival in his life.

“Why don’t you tell me,” he said to her, “when it was you met my grandmother and what inducement she used to convince you to come to London and play my wife?”

The dowager stood in the hall and gaped at the closed door before her. Whatever had just happened?

“Grandmother?” Hubert called out from the end of the hall. “Are you well?”

He came to her side and looked down at her, concern knitting his brow.

He was a doltish clod, but he was her grandson (though she blamed his father for marrying Baron Nocton’s youngest daughter—the gel had brought a less-than-alert nature into the bloodlines). Still Hubert was family, and when there was trouble about, who else did you have to turn to but family?

“Grandmother, should I call Mrs. Simmons? Have one of the maids come to help you to bed?”

“Oh, leave off, Hubert, I’m not so in my dotage that I can’t tend to my own needs.” But still she let him lead her down to her chamber, albeit reluctantly. “It’s just that I was a bit distressed to see Alex and Emmaline so…”

“Fond of each other?” Hubert offered. “Yes, it is disconcerting to see a man so agog over his wife. Not natural, if you ask me.”

“He’s agog?”

“Utterly besotted,” Hubert confided.

Besotted? No, that couldn’t be.

Hubert wasn’t done with his tattle. “I fear they’ve been quite content to spend all their time in there of late. Sedgwick practically keeps her a prisoner to his whims. You should have heard the racket coming from that room last night. Why, it went on for hours!” He clucked his tongue. “Disgraceful.”

“Hours?” his grandmother said weakly, slanting a glance back at the door.

“Hours,” Hubert confirmed. “Really, something should be done about it. He’ll kill her in the end.”

“How so?” she managed to ask. Sedgwick had always seemed, well, so dull. Hardly the type to be so…

“How, you ask? I’ll tell you. Though this is Lilith’s theory, not mine. She says that given Emmaline’s ill health, a child would surely kill her. She was most distressed by the thought.”

“A child?”

Hubert nodded. “Perhaps you can speak to Sedgwick. Urge him to send her back to the country before it is too late.”

“Never fear,” Genevieve, Lady Sedgwick, told him, rallying her rattled senses and gathering up several of her beloved dogs in her arms. “In the morning, I’ll see to just that very thing.”

Emmaline scrambled up from atop the coverlet. “Wha-a-at?”

Sedgwick stalked toward her, shrugging off his jacket, his cravat and his waistcoat. They fell to the floor in a negligent heap. “I said, when did you and my grandmother cook up this little scheme?” His boots followed.

She shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Demmit, why had Lady Sedgwick come to town? She was about to ruin everything with her meddling—and Emmaline was an expert on just how much trouble unchecked meddling could cause.

Without a word, Sedgwick caught her by the ankle and plucked off her shoe, tossing it so it hit the wall and fell behind a chair. “How did she discover the truth?” he asked, his fingers running up her calf until they came to her garter. With a quick flick of his fingers, he had her stocking free and was rolling it down her leg.

“Sedgwick, you have it all wrong—”

He dropped her ankle and caught her other foot, giving it the same attention.

“She was doing well,” he said as he caught hold of her and flipped her on her stomach. “Until I mentioned going to bed.” He climbed atop her, his thighs on either side of her, and he quickly undid the laces of her gown, pulling them free.