A Valentine Wedding (28 page)

“I need a drink, and the horses need watering.”

Emma pulled into the courtyard of the Red Lion. Ostlers were racing to change horses for a trio of post chaises heading out on the Great North road.

Alasdair sprang down to the cobbles. “Come.” He held up a hand to assist Emma to alight.

She hesitated for an instant, then took the hand and stepped down herself. She knew Alasdair was now angry and she knew that in her typically perverse fashion she had engineered the scene that was about to unfold. Despite her dread of his reaction, she needed the confrontation. They had never been able
to conceal their emotions from each other, rocketing from one tempestuous peak to another. Maybe it wasn’t the most mature way of going on, but neither of them seemed able to help it.

Alasdair released her wrist the instant she had touched ground. “Go into the inn and bespeak a private parlor,” he said, adding with frozen courtesy, “And a jug of ale for me, if you please.”

Emma did as he asked. The landlord, bowing in the doorway, assured her that he had a private parlor overlooking the street. He would send refreshments immediately. He snapped his fingers at a maidservant, instructing her to show the lady up.

Emma followed the girl upstairs and into a square, wainscotted apartment. She was standing at the mullioned window overlooking the street when Alasdair came in.

“The landlord is sending up ale and coffee,” she said tonelessly, drawing off her gloves. “Also some cold chicken and a game pie. I didn’t know if you were hungry.”

“Not particularly,” Alasdair said. He stood with his back to the fire, lifting the tail of his driving coat to warm his backside.

“I suppose Maria must be well on her way by now,” Emma observed, not turning from the window.

“All right, Emma, that’s enough!” Alasdair declared. “What the hell’s going on here! You’ve been sulking ever since I arrived in Mount Street this morning and—”

“I have not been sulking!” Emma cried, swinging round on him. “I
never
sulk.”

“Until this morning, I might have agreed with you,” he retorted. “Just why am I getting the cold shoulder?”

Emma dropped her gloves onto a gate-legged table. “As it happens, I don’t care to hear …” she began, then broke off as the maidservant returned with food and drink. Emma turned back to the window.

The girl looked curiously at the two occupants of the parlor. The tension between them was so thick you could cut it with a knife. She laid out the contents of her tray, making more of a bustle than the simple task warranted, but the silence in the room was so noisy that she felt an overpowering need to fill it.

“Will that be all, sir?” She bobbed a curtsy in Alasdair’s direction, since Emma still had her back to the room.

“Yes … yes,” he waved her away with a brusque gesture. She curtsied again and hastened from the room with her empty tray.

“Let’s begin again.” Alasdair poured himself ale. “What is it that you don’t care to hear?” He took a deep draft from his tankard and regarded her through narrowed eyes. He was conscious of his own anxiety, the apprehension flickering beneath his annoyance, and it didn’t do anything to make his demeanor more conciliatory.

“I do not care to hear myself discussed by the likes of Lady Melrose,” Emma said, her color now rather high, the faintest tremor in her voice. “Discussed in disparaging terms that are attributed to yo
u!”

Alasdair stared at her for a moment in complete bewilderment. He set his tankard back on the table. “I don’t understand you.”

“Don’t you?” Her voice shook with anger now. “Perhaps you don’t remember giving your opinion of me to Lady Melrose, in terms that I understand had to be heard to be believed. Vulgar as Letty Lade, I believe was one of them. Perhaps you don’t recall saying
to her that you couldn’t wait until I found a husband and you could be free of your
odious
responsibilities as trustee.”

She caught her breath on an angry little sob and pressed her fingers to her mouth, fighting for control. She would not give way in front of him.

“What else did you discuss with her?” she continued, taking advantage of his momentarily stunned silence. “My skills at bedsport, perhaps? Do you enjoy comparing your mistresses, Alasdair?”

Alasdair paled. “That’s enough!” he declared, his eyes ablaze in his white face, a muscle twitching in the corner of his rigidly set mouth. “Let me just get this right. You are accusing me of discussing you with other women?”

“Not just discussing,” she fired back. “Disparaging me to your other women, so that they can repeat what you’ve said to their friends and acquaintances and anyone else in society who cares to hear … so that your words are on the tongue of every old cat and gossip in the entire town!”

She whirled away from him, unable to look at him, swept away on the hot crimson tide of her hurt and her anger, and unsure which emotion was now uppermost.

“How dare you!” Alasdair spoke with a quiet ferocity that was merely intensified by the softness of his voice. “How
dare
you, Emma!”

“How dare I what?” she flung over her shoulder. “I am merely repeating what I heard. And heard in the most public place.”

“You
dare
to believe I would do such a thing? That I would be so blind to decency, to propriety, that I would discuss
you
in personal terms with
anyone?”
“I heard it,” she said flatly. “I believe what I heard.”

Alasdair crossed the room in two strides. He caught her shoulders and spun her around to face him. “By God, Emma, I have never been so close to striking a woman as I am now.”

“Oh, go on, then!” she cried. “Violence is only what one would expect of a man who would belittle one mistress to curry favor with another.” She flinched from the look in his eyes. His fingers curled hruisingly on her shoulders, and she waited in a kind of dreadful expectancy for him to do as he’d threatened. It would make her despise him even more. It would finally, absolutely kill all other emotions.

Alasdair’s hands dropped from her shoulders. He stepped away from her. He sighed a long, deep, shuddering breath, then rubbed his eyes and his mouth with his fingertips, ran his flat palms across his face in a gesture of utter weariness.

Emma saw that his hands shook.

“Instead of hurling accusations at me, why don’t you simply tell me what occurred?” he said, his voice now as calm as a millpond. “Clearly you have some reason for this insult. And, by God, Emma, it had better be a good one.”

The first faint possibility came to her that maybe it was all a mistake, a hideous mistake. She felt the first stirring of hope. She knew Alasdair and she knew he could not have been feigning his anger. He gave not the slightest sign of guilty awareness, of even the remotest hint of conscience.

She took a deep breath and told him exactly what she’d overheard in the retiring room at Almack’s.

Alasdair listened, his expression growing livid as she spoke. Emma’s voice faltered once or twice as she
saw the bright rage sparking in his eyes, but she continued steadily with her tale, careful not to embellish what she’d heard.

When she’d finished, Alasdair said, “Listen to me, and listen to me very carefully. I have never, I would never, discuss you with anyone in any personal terms whatsoever. Julia Melrose has a mischievous tongue. And she may consider she has an ax to grind. Whatever she attributed to me did not come from me.”

Emma rubbed her hands together as if they were cold. “But can you deny that she could have received such an impression from you that would make her feel justified in saying those things?”

“I cannot say what impression she might have received from me,” he said with curt dismissal. “I have no idea what she might have twisted to suit her own purposes.”

“So you would never talk about me with another woman?”

“Have I not just said so?” he demanded angrily.

Emma swallowed and for the first time ever mentioned the taboo subject. “Not even with the mother of your child?”

Alasdair’s face closed. He said with icy finality, “We will leave Lucy out of this, if you please. I will no more discuss her with you than I would discuss you with her.”

“So you really do think it’s possible to keep all your women in separate compartments?” Emma observed.

They’d started on this road and she was now determined to go down it to the very end. It was way past time, and if it led to the final irrevocable break between them, then so be it. She knew now she couldn’t live like Alasdair. The ephemeral pleasures of passion
and amusing and enthusiastic companionship were not enough for her. And they never would be.

Alasdair turned away from her. He picked up his tankard and took another drink. He walked to the hearth and stood, one foot on the bright copper fender, his left arm stretched along the mantelpiece, his eyes on the fire. He raised his head and drank again.

Emma waited, her chest suddenly tight, her breath suspended.

“How many mistresses do you think I have, Emma?” he asked conversationally.

“I don’t know. There’s Lady Melrose, there’s me, if I can be called one, there’s the mother of your child,” she said doggedly.

“There’s you.” The simple statement was spoken so quietly that for a minute she wasn’t sure she had heard him aright.

“That is,” he continued, “assuming you consider yourself to be my mistress.”

“Only me?” she said.

“Only you.”

“Oh.” It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what had happened to the others. Was this the ax Julia Melrose was grinding? But then she reflected that it wasn’t her business. She could hardly accuse him of talking about her in one breath and then ask him to talk about other women in the next.

“Just me …
at the moment?”
It was important to get this absolutely clear.

“Until you decide otherwise.”

“Oh,” she said again. There was silence, into which drifted the sounds from the street below: the rattle of iron wheels on cobbles, a hawker crying his wares, the squeal of a kicked dog.

“Come here,” Alasdair said, setting his tankard on the mantelpiece.

Emma hung back for a minute. He had a certain look in his eye that she wasn’t sure about.

“Emma, come here,” he repeated quietly, crooking a finger at her.

She went over to him, reflecting crossly that it was absurd to feel this defiant bravado, as if she was somehow in the wrong. She had had every right to confront him.

Alasdair clasped her face between his hands. “You, my sweet, are the most suspicious, crosspatch of a termagant it was ever any man’s misfortune to adore.”

Emma’s eyes glowed gold. “Adore?” she queried.

“Yes, damn you! For my sins.” He kissed her roughly, his hands hard on her face. “You are not in the least adorable, and yet I’ve adored you from the moment I first saw you with your stripey pigtails and torn petticoat.”

“Did I have?” she asked, in genuine surprise at such a recollection.

“You always had a torn petticoat.”

“That has to be an exaggeration,” she protested.

“Quite possibly.” His arms slid around her back until he was cupping her shoulder blades in his palms, holding her tight against him. He gazed steadily down into her eyes.

“I don’t know what else to say, Emma. I want you. I need you. I love you as I have never loved another woman. If that’s not enough for you, I don’t know what else I can do or say.”

There was such plea in his voice. It was so uncharacteristic of Alasdair, Emma was silenced. She stood in the circle of his arms, just looking at him.

“Do you love me?” he asked when the silence became intolerable.

“Yes,” she said in a low voice. “I have always loved you. Even when I loathe you, I love you.”

Alasdair laughed softly and kissed the corner of her mouth. “Well, maybe that’s as much as I can expect … for now.”

She would learn to trust him again. He told himself that the battle was almost won as her body softened in his arms and her mouth yielded to his kiss. They were made to be together, inextricably entwined. Emma could not hold out against this truth forever.

Chapter Thirteen

They reached the Black Gull at Potters Bar soon after noon. Sam led the horses off to bait them and Emma went into the inn to order a nuncheon for when Maria arrived in the chaise. They should arrive soon after one o’clock, Alasdair reckoned. The journey from Potters Bar to Stevenage, where they would stop for the night, would take the chaise another two hours this afternoon. An easy enough journey that wouldn’t tire Maria unduly.

Emma gave her orders in the inn and then went back to the stableyard. Alasdair was standing under the arched carriage entrance to the yard, looking down the street.

“Can you see them?” She came up beside him.

“Not yet.”

“Let’s take a stroll. I could do with stretching my legs.”

He nodded agreeably and gave her his arm.

“I’ve been thinking,” Emma said. Alasdair groaned. “Not again. That always seems to lead to trouble.”

“Be serious.”

“Believe me, I am being.”

Emma treated this with the disdain it deserved. “Don’t you think it would have been much more convenient for those men last night if I hadn’t woken up when I did?”