Prince Of Dreams (33 page)

Emma kept her gaze on the woman, not daring to look at Adam. “You and your family are quite welcome to share Christmas with us, Lady Milbank.”

Even as the name left her lips, it sent an odd feeling down Emma's spine. Lady Milbank—the title she had once longed for more than anything else.

Charlotte Milbank's face was round and boneless, but her skin was flawless, a beautiful milk white with just a hint of pink in her cheeks. Perhaps if she were possessed of a vivacious personality, she could be considered attractive, but there was accusation in her flint-gray eyes, and her small mouth was tight and unsmiling.

Emma had the strange urge to console the woman.
You have nothing to fear from me
, she longed to say. Instead she smiled politely and drew Charlotte toward a nearby group of guests in the drawing room, introducing her to each of them. Brixton and Adam lingered behind, while Brixton admired the huge tree in the central hall.

Emma left Charlotte Milbank's side and began to mingle with other guests, but her gaze darted restlessly around the scene. Nikolas would return soon—she had to find him. He must be warned that Brixton and the Milbanks were attending. She refused to look at Adam, although she sensed that he was staring at her.
Damn you, Adam
, she thought angrily.
Why must you make trouble for me? What's done is done. You left me and married someone else, and I managed to recover from the hurt. Now let me get on with my life
!

Moving through the crowd, Emma played the part of hostess, and finally took a moment to glance at Adam. He wore a pleasant expression, but he seemed tense, his smile forced. His wife was at his side, her round white hand poised on his arm. Emma overheard a brief portion of their conversation as she walked near them. Adam was attempting to tell a story.

“…friends of ours employed a rather haughty footman dressed in the most splendid blue livery—”

“Black livery, dear,” Charlotte interrupted gently.

Adam continued as if he hadn't heard her. “—and we were walking in their garden, beside the yew hedges—”

“They were fruit trees, darling,” Charlotte corrected.

“—when we heard the most frightful yelp, and
splash
! The footman had slipped and fallen into the fish pond on his way to the carriage house. I've never laughed so much.”

“It was quite vulgar,” Charlotte added primly.

Emma felt a touch at her elbow and turned to find Tasia beside her. Tasia's face was soft with concern. She indicated the Milbanks with a flicker of her gaze. “I see you have unexpected company,” she said quietly.

Emma made a comical face and sighed. “When Nikolas sees them—”

“Nikolas won't make a scene,” Tasia assured her. “He has too much self-control.”

“I hope so.”

“Adam seems rather henpecked,” Tasia observed.

“Yes, I noticed that.” Adam was a sensitive man with touchy pride. Why had he married a woman like Charlotte? Perhaps she was reacting out of insecurity, trying to assert herself by badgering him. “The poor woman,” Emma said suddenly. “I know what it's like, trying to hold onto an elusive man. I tried for a long time, and finally recognized the folly of it.”

“Whom are you referring to?” Tasia asked. “Adam or Nikolas?”

Emma smiled ruefully. “Both, I suppose. But Nikolas has changed, and Adam hasn't. I think Adam thrives on keeping a woman slightly off-balance, never letting her feel that she can entirely depend on him.”

“And you feel you can depend on Nikolas?” came Tasia's soft question.

“Yes. Everything I've seen during the past few weeks has convinced me I must take that chance. I've made up my mind to trust and believe in Nikolas, until he proves me wrong.”

Tasia's gaze was searching. “Have you come to care for him, Emma?”

Emma hesitated, debating her answer. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Adam disentangle himself from his wife and wander through the crowd, stopping at the French doors that opened onto the garden. He turned and gazed directly at Emma.

Adam wanted to speak with her privately. Emma looked away from him, her brow marked with a troubled frown. Soon she would slip away and join him.

“Are you certain that's wise?” Tasia asked, reading the situation accurately.

“It may not be wise, but it's necessary. I must settle things between us, once and for all.”

Nikolas returned to the drawing room with a sense of relief. The boys had delighted Jake with their admiration of the pony. Stokehurst had been polite and even marginally friendly, murmuring that he would like to talk with him over a snifter of brandy sometime soon. Nikolas had agreed dutifully, perceiving that Emma had been correct—her father did seem to want peace between them.

As he crossed the threshold of the drawing room, an unfamiliar woman approached him. She was small and plump, with startlingly hawklike eyes set in her round face.

“Your Highness,” she said in a deep voice. “I am Lady Charlotte Milbank. Your wife and my husband both seem to be missing. Since I am unfamiliar with your estate, I must prevail on you to help me locate them.”

The garden was dark and rustling with winter breezes. The ground was hard and the hedges laced with frost. Emma's breath blew in ghost-puffs as she walked through the freezing night air.

The garden was the only place she and Adam could be guaranteed the privacy they needed. It seemed appropriate that they should meet here, the last place they had truly been together before Nikolas had intervened in their lives.

She found what she was looking for, a small clearing behind the border of Irish yews. Adam was waiting there, his longish hair blowing gently around his face and neck. He seemed so much older, as if years instead of months had gone by. Emma felt as if she had aged as well. How could it be that they had both changed so greatly?

She no longer saw them as young and impetuous lovers, and she realized they were separated by more than their marriages to other people. She had never really loved Adam. Real love was accepting people's faults, and forgiving them when they failed. Understanding their weakness, and loving them better for it. What she and Adam had shared was an illusion—it had crumbled at the first real challenge they had faced.

She stopped a few feet away from him. Her lips trembled from the cold. “Why did you come, Adam?”

He held out his hand, his palm filled with the white gleam of pearls. “I wanted to give these to you.”

The earrings she had sent back to him. Emma shook her head and folded her arms across her middle. “I can't accept them.”

“Why not? Aren't they as fine as the jewels he gives you?” His gaze dropped to the tiger brooch at her throat.

Emma swallowed hard, uncomfortable at being alone with him. “What do you want from me?” she asked in a mixture of impatience and pleading.

“I want to go back to the night you and I were here in this garden. I would do it all differently. I wouldn't let myself be intimidated into leaving you this time. I didn't realize until it was too late that you were my only chance at happiness.”

“That's not true.”

“Isn't it? People say that Nikolas has changed, that marriage to you has made him into a better man. You might have done that for me had I married you. You would have defied your family and the whole world to become my wife. You would have loved me.”

Once, this moment might have given Emma great pleasure, seeing how much Adam regretted having abandoned her. But now she didn't want his regrets—she wanted them both to find peace. “Adam, it does neither of us any good to dwell on the past.”

“What if I can't stop myself?” he asked fiercely, casting the earrings at her feet with such force that one of the loops shattered, sending pearls flying around her skirts. “I wanted to see you wearing these tonight…wearing something of mine.”

“You should have given them to your wife.”

“I don't love her,” Adam said, his eyes dark with intense misery. “After I gave you up, I sold my soul. I thought Charlotte's fortune would be adequate consolation. Do you know what I learned?” He laughed bitterly. “My newfound wealth comes with obligations that turn my stomach. Charlotte treats me as if I'm a trained monkey. She expects me to do her will, and she rewards me only when I please her. I've lost all pride, all self-respect.”

“Oh, Adam,” Emma whispered sadly. “You mustn't tell me such things. I can't help you.”

“But you can.”

Emma had opened her mouth to argue when she heard the sound of footsteps on the hard ground and the movement of someone brushing by the garden hedges. A few seconds later, Charlotte Milbank appeared. Her pale face was expressionless, but her eyes gleamed with angry triumph. “We've found them,” she announced to her companion, who stepped onto the path beside her.

“Nikki,” Emma said, her heart sinking.

Her husband spoke very quietly to Adam. “Get off my property or I'll kill you.” For some men the phrase might have been a figure of speech, but Nikolas was in deadly earnest.

“No,” Emma intervened swiftly. “Let them be, Nikki. Don't give the gossips more fodder. Besides, you have business concerns with Mr. Brixton and his American crowd, don't you? You mustn't offend Brixton by turning out his sister and her husband.”

Nikolas's tigerish gaze fastened on her. “Why do you want Milbank to stay?”

“We must be leaving now anyway,” Charlotte Milbank murmured, coming forward to take Adam's arm. “My head is beginning to ache. And I've seen what I came here to see. Come along, dear.”

At first it seemed doubtful whether or not Adam would move. The silence became excruciating. Finally he obeyed his wife's imperious tugging and left the garden with her.

Nikolas stared at the scattered pearls on the ground by Emma's feet.

She felt defensive, when there was no reason to be. Angry at her own uneasiness, Emma took the offensive. “What now, Nikki?” she asked crisply. “Arguments? Accusations?”

“Did you invite him?” He was still looking at the pearls.

“Do you think I wanted him here?”

“Perhaps you did. Are you testing me, Emma?”

The question sent her into a sudden fury. “I won't defend myself. Believe what you like.”

“I want your explanation.”

“Do you really?” she asked, all sarcastic innocence. “How wonderful that you've decided to be fair with me, after you've already drawn your own conclusions! You and Adam are exactly alike—a pair of dogs fighting over a bone. Well, I won't be pushed and pulled and manipulated by the two of you. How
dare
you look at me with suspicion when I've been trying so damned hard to believe the best of you! Don't I deserve the same consideration? The same blind trust?”

There was no sound, no words exchanged, nothing but stillness. Nikolas seemed occupied with an inner struggle that required all of his concentration. Emma gazed at his austere profile, the lines of his nose and cheekbones etched with silver moonlight.

Nikolas drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, seeming to relax. “I know you didn't invite him,” he said gruffly. “When I saw you here with him, I wanted to strangle you both. I was…jealous.”

Emma felt her temper subside. “There's no reason for that.”

“Isn't there?” He was quiet for another long moment. “Six months ago I stood in this garden and heard you tell Adam that you loved him—words you've never said to me.”

“Didn't I tell you in your past life?” she asked in a feeble attempt at humor.

“Yes,” he replied, utterly serious. “And I want to hear it again. It's the only hope that sustains me, Emma.”

To everyone's relief, the holidays passed without further incident. The Milbanks faded from Nikolas's mind as he occupied himself with the needs of his family, tenants, and business. Once he had finally found a highly qualified candidate to be Jake's tutor, Nikolas summoned him to the Angelovsky estate in the afternoon. The elderly man was shown to the library, where Nikolas and Jacob waited.

Nikolas gestured for the elderly man before him to have a seat. “Mr. Robinson, my son and I would like to offer you the position of tutor. Your credentials are excellent, and after meeting with you last week, we both agreed you were the right man.”

Robinson, a portly, gray-haired gentleman, had taught at Eton for the past forty years, and had now come to desire a simpler life as a private tutor. There was a kindness and gentle humor that Nikolas liked about the man, but also a thread of steel that suggested discipline and good sense. More importantly, Jake approved of him, regarding him as a grandfatherly figure.

Robinson's neatly trimmed beard split with a smile. “I accept,” he said without delay. “I might add that it was quite unusual to allow the boy to have a say in such a decision—but also refreshing.” His eyes twinkled as he glanced at Jake. “I believe Master Jacob and I will do well together.”

“We'll provide excellent accommodations for you wherever the family happens to be staying. We would also like you to travel with us on occasion.”

“I'll look forward to that, Your Highness. Traveling is always an excellent opportunity for learning. Even for a man my age.”

“That's good—” Nikolas broke off as he saw the butler appear at the library door. “Yes, Stanislaus?”

“A carrier just brought this to the door, Your Highness.” The butler brought him a folded and sealed note on a small silver tray, then departed from the room.

“Excuse me,” Nikolas murmured to Mr. Robinson, breaking the wax seal and scanning the note, which had been addressed exclusively to him.

Nikolas
—

I want to discuss a matter of great importance with you. It involves Emma. Meet me at the old gatehouse at Southgate Hall, at four o'clock this afternoon. I would prefer that you mention this to no one
.

Stokehurst

“What the hell…?” Nikolas muttered, reading the note once more. The cryptic message didn't seem in Stokehurst's usual straightforward style. But perhaps that was because the man was concerned about his daughter. Nikolas had no choice except to comply with the summons. He wanted to be on good terms with Emma's family. And if that meant going to extra lengths to please her father, it was worth it.