The Count of Monte Cristo (The Wild and Wanton Edition) (41 page)

“Not at all, sir,” he said with a wink in Emma’s direction “It is a beautiful moonlight night; and so mild that I must draw back from your great fire.”

Emma frowned. So mild? She herself was feeling rather heated. A flare of heat had shot up her spine oddly enough at the same moment as that wink of Mr. Knightley’s. She fanned her neck with one hand as her father quickly settled into his favorite topic of weather and all of the consummate ways it could affect one’s health.

“But you must have found it very damp and dirty. I wish you may not catch cold.”

“Dirty, sir! Look at my shoes. Not a speck on them.”

“Well! that is quite surprising, for we have had a vast deal of rain here. It rained dreadfully hard for half an hour while we were at breakfast. I wanted them to put off the wedding.”

“By the bye — I have not wished you joy.” His lips twitched with suppressed humour. “Being pretty well aware of what sort of joy you must both be feeling, I have been in no hurry with my congratulations; but I hope it all went off tolerably well. How did you all behave? Who cried most?”

“Ah! poor Miss Taylor! ‘Tis a sad business.”

“Poor Mr. and Miss Woodhouse, if you please; but I cannot possibly say ‘poor Miss Taylor.’ I have a great regard for you and Emma; but when it comes to the question of dependence or independence! At any rate, it must be better to have only one to please than two.”

“Especially when
one
of those two is such a fanciful, troublesome creature!” said Emma playfully, leaning forward to tease Mr. Knightley with a coquettish smile. “That is what you have in your head, I know — and what you would certainly say if my father were not by.”

Mr. Knightley’s brows rose at her final words, and Emma could almost swear that his gaze shifted as he looked at her; became more heated somehow. And then that gaze dipped to her lips, leaving Emma quite breathless. Why did she have a feeling that if her father were indeed not near, she would not have gotten away with such close proximity without some sort of consequence? And why did she have the feeling that she would not have minded at all the consequence Mr. Knightley’s sudden sharp gaze seemed to promise? Oh heavens, this close, he smelled far too good to ignore. She leaned in even further, then jumped back in alarm as her father resumed the conversation, jerking her from her foolish reverie.

“I believe it is very true, my dear, indeed,” said Mr. Woodhouse, with a sigh. “I am afraid I am sometimes very fanciful and troublesome.”

“My dearest papa! You do not think I could mean
you
, or suppose Mr. Knightley to mean
you
. What a horrible idea! Oh no! I meant only myself. Mr. Knightley loves to find fault with me, you know — in a joke — it is all a joke. We always say what we like to one another.”

Mr. Knightley, in fact, was one of the few people who could see faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them: and though this was not particularly agreeable to Emma herself, she knew it would be so much less so to her father, that she would not have him really suspect such a circumstance as her not being thought perfect by every body. Besides, when one was as perfect as Mr. Knightley, correction was tolerable.

“Emma knows I never flatter her,” said Mr. Knightley, a warm glow in his eyes as he looked at her softened the words, “but I meant no reflection on any body. Miss Taylor has been used to have two persons to please; she will now have but one. The chances are that she must be a gainer.”

“Well,” said Emma, willing to let it pass — “you want to hear about the wedding; and I shall be happy to tell you, for we all behaved charmingly. Every body was punctual, every body in their best looks: not a tear, and hardly a long face to be seen. Oh no; we all felt that we were going to be only half a mile apart, and were sure of meeting every day.”

“Dear Emma bears every thing so well,” said her father. “But, Mr. Knightley, she is really very sorry to lose poor Miss Taylor, and I am sure she
will
miss her more than she thinks for.”

Emma turned away her head, divided between tears and smiles. She jumped when she felt a warm hand cover hers. Her eyes flew back to see Mr. Knightley gifting her with a soft, knowing smile. He squeezed her hand gently, and a corresponding throb lit through her abdomen and shot down to the secret place between her legs. “It is impossible that Emma should not miss such a companion,” said Mr. Knightley, his deep, soft voice rumbling through her and setting off more alarming sensations. “We should not like her so well as we do, sir,” he squeezed her hand once more, “if we could suppose it; but she knows how much the marriage is to Miss Taylor’s advantage; she knows how very acceptable it must be, at Miss Taylor’s time of life, to be settled in a home of her own, and how important to her to be secure of a comfortable provision, and therefore cannot allow herself to feel so much pain as pleasure. Every friend of Miss Taylor must be glad to have her so happily married.”

She felt the mild rebuke in his words, but the comfort of his hand overshadowed all. She gave him as cheerful a smile as she could manage. “And you have forgotten one matter of joy to me,” said Emma, “and a very considerable one — that I made the match myself. I made the match, you know, four years ago; and to have it take place, and be proved in the right, when so many people said Mr. Weston would never marry again, may comfort me for any thing.”

Mr. Knightley shook his head at her, gave a great sigh, and withdrew his hand. Emma was just feeling a curious loss from the missing warmth of the gesture and almost sought out his hand again to keep the warm, liquid feeling rolling through her belly and even further down when her father fondly replied, “Ah! my dear, I wish you would not make matches and foretell things, for whatever you say always comes to pass. Pray do not make any more matches.”

“I promise you to make none for myself, papa; but I must, indeed, for other people. It is the greatest amusement in the world! And after such success, you know! Every body said that Mr. Weston would never marry again. Oh dear, no! Mr. Weston, who had been a widower so long, and who seemed so perfectly comfortable without a wife, so constantly occupied either in his business in town or among his friends here, always acceptable wherever he went, always cheerful — Mr. Weston need not spend a single evening in the year alone if he did not like it. Oh no! Mr. Weston certainly would never marry again. Some people even talked of a promise to his wife on her deathbed, and others of the son and the uncle not letting him. All manner of solemn nonsense was talked on the subject, but I believed none of it.

“Ever since the day — about four years ago — that Miss Taylor and I met with him in Broadway Lane, when, because it began to drizzle, he darted away with so much gallantry, and borrowed two umbrellas for us from Farmer Mitchell’s, I made up my mind on the subject. I planned the match from that hour; and when such success has blessed me in this instance, dear papa, you cannot think that I shall leave off match-making.”

“I do not understand what you mean by ‘success,’” said Mr. Knightley, his lips quirked. “Success supposes endeavour. Your time has been properly and delicately spent, if you have been endeavouring for the last four years to bring about this marriage. A worthy employment for a young lady’s mind! But if, which I rather imagine, your making the match, as you call it, means only your planning it, your saying to yourself one idle day, ‘I think it would be a very good thing for Miss Taylor if Mr. Weston were to marry her,’ and saying it again to yourself every now and then afterwards, why do you talk of success? Where is your merit? What are you proud of? You made a lucky guess; and
that
is all that can be said.”

Emma leaned back and crossed her arms beneath her bosom. “And have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess? I pity you. I thought you cleverer — for, depend upon it a lucky guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it. And as to my poor word ‘success,’ which you quarrel with, I do not know that I am so entirely without any claim to it. You have drawn two pretty pictures; but I think there may be a third — a something between the do-nothing and the do-all. If I had not promoted Mr. Weston’s visits here, and given many little encouragements, and smoothed many little matters, it might not have come to any thing after all. I think you must know Hartfield enough to comprehend that.”

“A straightforward, open-hearted man like Weston, and a rational, unaffected woman like Miss Taylor, may be safely left to manage their own concerns. You are more likely to have done harm to yourself, than good to them, by interference.” His brows drew together in the typical concerned expression he donned when lecturing Emma. It cast his eyes in a shadow that did not diminish the glow that sprang from their warm depth. Emma looked away, disconcerted.

“Emma never thinks of herself, if she can do good to others,” rejoined Mr. Woodhouse, understanding but in part. “But, my dear, pray do not make any more matches; they are silly things, and break up one’s family circle grievously.”

Emma uncrossed her arms and sat up straight, excitement tinting her tone. “Only one more, papa; only for Mr. Elton. Poor Mr. Elton! You like Mr. Elton, papa — I must look about for a wife for him. There is nobody in Highbury who deserves him — and he has been here a whole year, and has fitted up his house so comfortably, that it would be a shame to have him single any longer — and I thought when he was joining their hands to-day, he looked so very much as if he would like to have the same kind office done for him! I think very well of Mr. Elton, and this is the only way I have of doing him a service.”

“Mr. Elton is a very pretty young man, to be sure, and a very good young man, and I have a great regard for him. But if you want to shew him any attention, my dear, ask him to come and dine with us some day. That will be a much better thing. I dare say Mr. Knightley will be so kind as to meet him.”

“With a great deal of pleasure, sir, at any time,” said Mr. Knightley, laughing, his eyes crinkling at the corner, his teeth flashing white, “and I agree with you entirely, that it will be a much better thing. Invite him to dinner, Emma, and help him to the best of the fish and the chicken, but leave him to chuse his own wife. Depend upon it, a man of six or seven-and-twenty can take care of himself.”

Mr. Knightley left the Woodhouses at his first opportunity after dinner. He breathed an uneasy sigh as he mounted his horse and kneed him into a canter toward Donwell Abbey. His mind was a flurry of activity that spurred his body into a flurry of activity as well.

What, exactly, had Emma been about this evening? Smiling and leaning close and crossing her arms beneath her bosom. Had she taken complete leave of her senses?

His mind automatically countered, defending her. No, she had behaved in much the same way as she usually did. It had been
Mr. Knightley’s
reaction that had differed from the routine.

Mr. Knightley groaned as he admitted he had to come to terms with the fact that Emma Woodhouse, his sister-in-law’s younger sister, was no longer a child.

“Devil take it,” he muttered as he realized it was much, much worse than that. No, he could take Emma growing up. What he could not take, evidently, was her turning into a beautiful woman.

He should not have touched her; of that he was certain. What kind of fool’s errand had driven him to take her hand? Her slim fingers beneath his hand had almost been his undoing, but that had only been because of what came just prior.

If her mother had still been living, she would have told Emma that leaning far over when talking to a gentleman was a bad idea. Mr. Knightley had to confess that he had very little idea of what had been said between them while she had leaned close and smiled so prettily at him. No, his attention had been focused a bit below her mouth.

He had first noticed the enticing way her pulse fluttered at the base of her throat. The errant thought that he would like to place his mouth over it had stricken him like a blow. He had moved his eyes away, mortified that he had let his thoughts turn in such a direction, when he had encountered her breasts.

Atop his horse, Mr. Knightley sucked in a breath and closed his eyes. The vision of her beautiful bosom was still emblazoned across the backs of his eyelids. So full. So tempting. Mr. Knightley’s breath shuddered out of his chest.

His eyes sprang open with dread. Like a man facing the gallows, Mr. Knightley slowly directed his line of sight to his hips. He cursed at the inarguable evidence of where his thoughts had led him. His arousal pressed against the front of his breeches so fully, Mr. Knightley was obscenely unfit for polite company. He thanked heaven that his body had waited until he had been away from Emma and — he suppressed a shiver of mortification —
Mr. Woodhouse
before betraying him in such a manner.

Mr. Knightley shifted in the saddle trying to find a comfortable position to accommodate his current predicament, but after several moments, he gave up the endeavor as hopeless.

He readjusted his thighs’ grip on his mount and clicked his tongue twice while flicking the reins. The stallion immediately broke into a gallop, eager to work off the powerful energy of his impeccable bloodlines. Mr. Knightley leaned into the wind, hoping the elements would slap some sense into his traitorous body.

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