A Valentine Wedding (36 page)

“Well, I’m sure if you wish to take an airing, then that’s what we shall do,” Maria said, amenably changing tack. “A little drive in the barouche won’t do any harm, I daresay.”

“This morning I have an errand I must do alone,” Emma said. “But this afternoon we shall drive in the park at five o’clock and show the world that we’re back in circulation.”

“Alone?” Maria was clearly hurt. “What could you possibly need to do alone, my love?”

Emma frowned. If she told Maria she was going to do something as outrageous as visiting Alasdair at his
lodgings, the poor woman would throw a fit of hysterics. Young women did not visit gentlemen’s lodgings, even when the gentleman was an old friend and a trustee.

“That I can’t tell you,” she said after a minute. “Indeed, you really don’t wish to know.” She smiled at Maria. “Trust me, Maria. You really don’t wish to know.”

“Oh dear, is it something scandalous?” Maria was clearly very distressed.

“I shall do my best to ensure that no one sees me.” Emma attempted reassurance.

“Oh, mercy,” sighed Maria, obviously unreassured, and when Emma told Harris to fetch a hackney to the front door, she threw up her hands in horror and retreated to her boudoir.

Emma directed the jarvey to Albermarle Street. An anonymous hackney was her best chance of avoiding remark. They turned onto Albermarle Street and she leaned out of the window, trying to read the numbers on the houses. She was looking for number sixteen.

“It’s the next one on the right, jarvey,” she called, and the driver pulled in to the side of the road. Emma as she alighted looked up at the bow windows on either side of the front door. Then she froze, one foot on the street, the other
still
on the footstep.

She was staring straight into what was clearly Alasdair’s drawing room. And she was staring at what was clearly Alasdair. He was holding a woman in his arms. A small woman whose head reached only to his chest. His arms were wrapped around her, his hand palming the back of her head as he held her.

Emma felt sick. She climbed back into the hackney. “Driver, go to the end of the street. Stop on the corner.”

The jarvey shrugged and obliged. He drew in at the corner of Stafford Street. His passenger stared out of the window, down the street to number sixteen.

Had she really seen it? Seen Alasdair embracing a woman in his own drawing room? Her mind whirled as the frenzied questions chased each other. He’d promised her she was the only woman in his life. He’d
promised
her.

As she continued to stare at the house in a numbed trance, the door opened. Alasdair came out onto the step. His arm was around the woman, who was gazing up at him with what to Emma looked like naked adoration. As Emma watched, Alasdair took the woman’s shoulders and kissed her, before hugging her tightly, so tightly her feet almost left the ground.

Alasdair was supposed to be nursing his wounds … too battered as yet to leave his house to visit Mount Street. And yet he was not too battered for a little love play! He was smiling and he gave the woman’s cheek a little caressing pat.

Emma was filled with a pure red tide of anger. How
dared
he lie to her? He was the same shameless tomcatting rake he’d ever been. He professed love and marriage out of one side of his mouth and played pretty little love games out of the other with anyone who took his fancy.

She watched as the woman went off down the street while Alasdair stood on the top step waving to her. When he went back inside, Emma fumbled in her purse for a shilling for the jarvey, then she jumped down, disdaining the footstep, gathered up her skirts and ran back down the street to number sixteen.

She hammered on the knocker, so wild with fury now she could hardly see straight, let alone think.

Cranham stared in astonishment at the tall young woman whose eyes blazed in a face white with rage.

“Lord Alasdair is within, I believe,” she said and pushed past the manservant, marching immediately to the door to the left of the front door.

Cranham closed the front door and hastened to open the drawing room door, but she forestalled him, flinging it wide as she stalked in. It banged shut in Cranham’s nose.

“Emma!” Alasdair turned in astonishment from the table where he was pouring himself a glass of sherry. “To what do I owe this pleasure, my sweet?” He came toward her, hands outstretched, then he saw her face. His hands dropped to his sides again and his delighted smile faded. His eyes grew wary.

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re not accustomed to having female visitors,” Emma said scornfully. “Don’t expect me to believe
that
, sir. I imagine they come in droves … positively lining up for the privilege of—”

“Emma, for Christ’s sake, stop it!” Alasdair exclaimed. “I don’t know what the
hell
you’re talking about. Which, now I come to think of it, is frequently the case when you’re flinging accusations at me,” he added with a bite now to his voice. “What in the devil’s name have I done this time?”

“You don’t
know?”
She stared at him incredulously. “You are beyond belief, Alasdair!” She took a turn around the room, her step agitated, the embroidered flounce of her pale crepe gown swinging with her stride.

Alasdair watched her in confusion, but his own ready anger was rising in response to hers, even though he was as yet quite in the dark about its cause.

Emma came to a halt in front of him. Speaking very slowly, articulating every word as if she were trying to educate a dunce, she said, “You told me I’m the only woman in your life. Do you remember saying that, Alasdair? Do you?” She jabbed at his shoulder with a finger. “You tell me that and then I see you locked in the embrace of some—”

“Be very careful what you say, Emma!” he interrupted, grabbing the wrist of her still-jabbing hand. His voice was very soft. “Be
very
careful.”

Emma decided that it wasn’t necessary to cast aspersions on the woman she’d seen him with. It didn’t matter whether she was a whore or a woman of impeccable birth.

“So, who is she?” she demanded with sardonic curiosity. “The woman you were embracing in this very room ten minutes ago? The woman you kissed on your front door step? Not a stranger, I would have said. Someone you know very well. Someone with whom you are on the closest, most intimate terms.”

She turned from him with a gesture of disgust. “Not that it matters. Why should I care? I could never trust you. You lied to me. You have always lied to me.”

“I have
never
lied to you,” Alasdair stated quietly. “Don’t turn your back on me!” He reached for her shoulder and spun her around to face him again.

“You talk of trust, Emma. Well, have you considered that I can’t trust
you
to trust me? Have you thought of that? Why do you have to put the worst construction on what you saw? What possible justification do you have for that? Do you know how wearing it is to be constantly under suspicion? To feel
you’re always watching me, jumping to conclusions, waiting to catch me out?”

“But it’s not like that,” Emma cried. “I am not like that. But you’re so secretive. There are great areas of your life that you won’t even discuss. How can I trust you when I don’t know what’s going on in your life, even what you’re thinking half the time. When you refuse to share things, of course it looks as if you have something to hide. After the last time … after what you hid from me before … how can I trust you?”

She dashed a hand across her eyes, where angry tears were gathering. “You won’t tell me who that woman was. So what
am
I to think?”

“No,” Alasdair said with sudden icy finality. “I’d thought we could put things together, but obviously we can’t. This is just not going to work. I cannot and I will not live under suspicion the entire time, watching my every step.”

“No, you’re right,” Emma fired back. “It is
not
going to work. That was what I came to tell you anyway.” She turned to the door in a swirl of crepe. “Goodbye, Alasdair.” The door banged shut behind her.

He walked to the window, his mouth set, his eyes hard, and watched her walk swiftly away down the street without so much as a backward glance.

“Of all the obstinate, ill-tempered, mistrustful
vixens!”
Alasdair exclaimed to the velvet curtains. No man worth his salt would put up with it. Was he to account for every minute of his day, every conversation he had, every acquaintance he met?

He had not expected Lucy’s visit that morning. Indeed, she had never done such a thing before. But Tim had decided unilaterally that he was not going to
school anymore. Mike had refused to get involved, and Lucy, whose dearest wish was that her son should grow up to be a gentleman just like his father, had come to appeal to Alasdair to intervene.

Alasdair didn’t know whether he would have explained all this to Emma if she’d asked him about his visitor in a reasonable tone of voice instead of jumping to ridiculous conclusions.

He eased himself into a chair, his ribs aching, his bruises once more throbbing as if in sympathy with his mood. In all honesty, he didn’t think he would have told Emma. He would have frozen her questions in his usual fashion, resenting them as always.

But was she entitled to an explanation? He reached for his sherry glass and sipped reflectively, as his temper cooled down and his aches and pains eased off again.

Damn the woman! Was there ever such a shrew and a virago!
And just what had she meant about coming to tell him that it wouldn’t work? Had she finally decided not to marry him?

He drained his glass and set it down again. A cold finger seemed to be pressing against his spine. Was this more significant than their usual quarrels? Surely she hadn’t meant it. He certainly hadn’t. They both said things in the heat of the moment that were never intended to be taken seriously. It was the way they were.

But if she had been coming to tell him that, before that explosion of wrath, then it was a very different matter. He knew the strength of her will. If Emma had made up her mind, it could not easily be changed.

But change it he must. He could not live without her. Suspicious, impossible, hot-tempered creature that she was.

He rose from his chair and went to the piano. Sitting down, he played a series of chords before settling on Haydn’s
The Seasons.

If it was true that music had charms to soothe a savage beast, he was in dire need of such soothing, Alasdair thought with an ironical quirk of his mouth. He was preparing to break the defensive habits of a lifetime.

Chapter Seventeen

Maria listened to the sounds from the music room. At first there had been a great tumultuous cascade of music, but now the music was in a minor key, soft as weeping, and it wrung Maria’s heart. It would have taken someone a lot less sensitive than she to fail to recognize that Emma had not been herself since the return from Stevenage. She had been tense and jumpy, and her face in repose had an expression that seemed to Maria to be both sad and confused. But there had been nothing as powerfully depressed as the music pouring from her now. Maria was not given to fanciful rhetoric, but she thought she was listening to the expression of a soul in pain.

Maria had no idea where Emma had gone that morning, but she’d come back like a whirlwind, slamming into the house and into the music room without a word to anyone. And now the music filled the house with its hopeless sadness. And Maria was helpless.
The music room was sacrosanct. Only Alasdair ever went in there when Emma was playing.

Emma played to banish all thought from her mind. She had not gone to see Alasdair to break off their relationship irrevocably, for all that she’d said so. She had gone to talk to him, to ask him to understand her anxiety. She had gone hoping that he would give her something that would make it possible for her to love him without condition.

Now she had no hope. And only now that she understood that everything was finally and irretrievably over between them did she understand how much she had lost. It had been bad the first time, but the second time was almost unbearable. She had been tormented by the possibility of happiness, only to have it snatched away.