Desired by a Lord (Regency Unlaced 5) (13 page)

Xander sprang off the bed to follow Emily with long determined strides. He reached the dressing room just in time to witness her being very ill. And not for the first time, from the evidence there.

He quickly grabbed a towel, wet it in the ewer, then placed the damp cloth against Emily’s forehead as she continued to bend over the bowl.

“Please.” She groaned weakly. “You should not be in here.”

“Where else should I be but with you when you are obviously not well.” Xander dampened the cloth again and held it against her forehead.

“I am not ill. I am only—only—” Tears began to fall unchecked down her cheeks.

Xander threw down the towel and took her into his arms, fighting back his anger as he did so. Oh, not with Emily; she could not help being ill. It was the man responsible for Emily’s distress who would feel the full extent of Xander’s wrath.

The man Xander believed had never been Emily’s lover.

The same man Emily now suspected of having spied on the two of them together in the maze earlier today.

If it was true, he would wring the perverted little bastard’s neck.

Whether guilty of spying on them or not, the man was almost certainly a weasel of the most insidious kind, because he hid that unpleasantness behind the collar and clothing of the clergy.

Perhaps, instead of following Emily to her bedchamber, Xander should have gone to the stable and questioned Hodges. At the time, he had considered Emily’s welfare to be more of a priority.

“Leave it. I will have a maid come up and tidy in here,” Xander assured Emily, as she seemed at a loss for a way in which she might dispose of the contents of the bowl. “You are going to lie down, drink a cup of tea I will have brought up to you, and then you will sleep for a few hours.” It was testament to how ill Emily felt that she allowed him to pour her a glass of water, and drank it, before he guided her through to the bedchamber and helped her beneath the covers. All without argument.

She looked very pale lying back against the white pillows, her glorious red hair loose about her shoulders, knuckles white from where she gripped the covers so tightly. “It must have been something I ate.”

“Perhaps.” He allowed her the deception.

Xander inwardly admitted to feeling slightly nauseated himself at the thought of another man—of Littlejohn—watching him and Emily together.

Perverted bastard.

He fully intended getting to the bottom of this situation as soon as possible. “I will arrange for the two of us to eat a light supper together here, after you have slept. Then I intend to remain here with you for the rest of the night.”

Emily felt too ill to protest. What was the point? Xander would do exactly as he wished, no matter what she said. “I am so sorry about this.”

He straightened. “You have nothing to be sorry about. As you say, it was probably something you ate earlier.”

Emily was sure he didn’t believe that any more than she did. He knew exactly what—and who—was to blame for her present malaise. Xander was an intelligent man, would have guessed exactly what question she had been about to ask him when she was suddenly taken ill. “You will stay away from Littlejohn?”

His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

She moistened the dryness of her lips with the tip of her tongue, having a horrible taste in her mouth after her vomiting earlier, despite drinking the glass of water. “Because I asked it of you.” It was a poor enough reason, but she could not think of a better one in her present state.

Xander’s lips thinned. “I will need your promise first that you will explain this situation to me yourself once you are feeling better.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “You will hate me afterwards.”

He sat on the side of the bed before taking one of her hands in his. “I could never hate you, Emily. I might feel like spanking your backside on occasion, but never hate,” he teased gently. “Your promise?”

“I promise. You?”

He nodded. “I promise I will not attempt to speak with Littlejohn until after the two of us have spoken together.”

She smiled wanly. “Is it very wrong of me to feel…excited at the prospect of having my bottom spanked?”

“Is it wrong that I experience the same excitement at the prospect of spanking your bottom?”

She chuckled weakly. “What a naughty pair we are!”

“We are, indeed.” He bent and kissed her softly on the lips before standing. “I am going to ring for the tea now, and then you are going to sleep.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Minx!”

The darkness of Xander’s eyes might tell Emily he was only pretending to tease, that inside he was angry and worried, but nevertheless she felt grateful for that pretense.

Almost as much as she dreaded, feared, having to tell him the truth about herself.

“This casual eating is becoming an enjoyable habit,” Xander drawled as he and Emily sat at the small table together in her bedchamber, eating their supper.

Emily had made sure to be up, bathed, and dressed in her gray gown by the time Xander came to her bedchamber accompanied by a footman carrying the tray on which reposed their dinner.

She felt slightly better than she had late this afternoon, when Xander had left her here to sleep. Or, at least, she no longer felt nauseated. There was a cold, hard lump in her stomach at the thought of the conversation the two of them were to have once they had finished eating, but it was of dread rather than nausea.

Xander replenished Emily’s wineglass. He sensed she had once again drifted away in her thoughts. Unpleasant ones at that.

He had spent the hours Emily slept by first speaking with Hodges and then prowling the confines of his study, the place where he could feel her presence the most. He imagined her climbing the stepladder. Remembered those brief glimpses of her ankles and calves when she did so, and the lingering scent of her perfume.

But beneath all those things was the burning anger he felt toward Isaac Littlejohn.

Prowling up and down his study this afternoon, allowing his thoughts to drift and wander at will, had brought Xander to the conclusion the bastard had some sort of leverage over Emily. Something Littlejohn knew about her, which was allowing him to attempt to bend her to his will.

He had no idea what it could be, but having heard Hodges’s opinion of the man, Xander was now positive that had to be the answer.

As sure as he now was that Emily had only practiced her deception on him, pretending to be her husband in order to gain employment at Whitney Park, as her way of escaping Littlejohn.

And now the bastard had followed her.

Xander’s hands clenched on his thighs. “Have you eaten enough?”

Emily wished she could say no, that she could put off the moment of truth a while longer. Unfortunately, she had barely eaten any of the delicious food Cook had provided for them. She certainly could not force herself to eat any more in order to delay their conversation.

A promise was a promise, and she had made one earlier to Xander, to confide the Littlejohn situation to him, once they had eaten.

“Yes, thank you.” She stood to move across the room and stand in front of the window. It was full dark outside, but the moon was bright, and she could see the darker outline of the maze in the distance, the oak tree at its center. The place where she had known such happiness earlier today.

A happiness she would never know again.

Xander would want nothing more to do with her once the two of them had talked. Would probably wish to distance himself from her completely. The
ton
, Society, could be very unforgiving when it came to scandal. Emily’s past was mired in it. Her present life consumed by it.

“Emily…?”

She drew in a deep breath before turning to face Xander. The remnants of their meal had been removed, possibly by the same footman who had brought it, while she was so lost in thought. Xander now stood a short distance away, a look of enquiry on his aristocratically handsome face.

She straightened her shoulders. “You asked me for my family name the day I arrived here.”

“You avoided giving it.”

She nodded. “For good reason. I… My father’s name was Sir Walter Stanwick. My mother was Lady Rose Stanwick.” She kept her chin raised high as she waited for the recognition of those names she knew would surely come.

The shock.

The horror.

The disgust.

Chapter 15

Xander allowed himself a few moments to recollect all that he could remember of Sir Walter and Lady Rose Stanwick.

Only a few years older than himself, the lady had been a veritable and noted beauty.

Her husband was a jealous fool, always challenging other men to duels for so much as looking sideways at his wife.

Although Xander seemed to recall some of those duels had been justified, and for much more than merely looking sideways at Stanwick’s wife.

In fact—

“Yes.” Emily sighed as she finally saw, by the widening of his eyes, Xander’s dawning recognition of the situation. “My father killed my mother before killing himself.”

And Emily had found them both the following morning, in her mother’s bedchamber.

Her mother lay in the bed as if asleep, serene, apart from the red stain on her nightgown, directly over her heart.

Her father— Her father had not looked so peaceful in death. How could he when he lay slumped over her mother’s bed, the pistol shot, visible at his temple, exiting as a much larger, and less tidy hole, on the other side.

Emily had begun to scream at the sight of them, and she had not been able to stop screaming until the doctor arrived and had given her something to drink that had sent her into welcome blackness.

Unfortunately, her parents had been no less dead when she woke several hours later.

The scandal… Oh God, the scandal that ensued had been all that Society could talk about for days, weeks. And each story of how those deaths came about had been more lurid than the last.

At sixteen, Emily had not yet officially been out in Society. She’d attended several minor social events the younger children were allowed to attend, such as picnics and carriage rides with her mother, and made some friends amongst young ladies her own age.

Even those few treats had ceased immediately. In fact, Emily’s whole future had been in question, as not one of the family relatives had stepped forward to offer her a home.

Presumably, they were all too nervous of being tarred with the same brush as her parents.

Finally, her Aunt Celia had grudgingly taken her in, no doubt shamed into it, as her sister Rose’s adultery was the reason for the scandal in the first place. Her aunt then accepted the first marriage proposal made to Emily, and the wedding proceeding hastily before Emily was carried off to Ashingdon by Edmund Marsden and never saw her aunt again. Or any of her young friends from Society. She had been cast out, a pariah.

“Are you not shocked, Xander?” she challenged now. “My mother was an adulteress, my father her murderer, before he took his own life.”

“You are not your parents.”

“I am a result of their union.”

“Correct me if I am wrong, but did you imagine I would somehow think less of you? That you are in any way to blame for who or what your parents were?”

“Most in Society did.”

“I am not
most
, Emily. Besides… My own mother committed suicide. She took her own life,” Xander repeated as Emily stared at him. It was the first time he had been able to say the words out loud in many years.

“Why?” Emily prompted softly.

He breathed deeply. “I have always assumed because of something my father did.”

“You
assumed
?”

He scowled his irritation. “I only shared this with you because… I thought it might help for you to realize you are not alone in… Never mind.” He shook his head.

“But, Xander.” Her tone was reasoning. “If this is the cause of the estrangement between you and your father, why did the two of you never talk about it?”

“I left soon after my mother’s funeral and never came back.”

“But—”

“We are not talking about me, Emily,” he continued impatiently.

“Then maybe we should. What—”

“When I said we are not talking about it, that is precisely what I meant.” His voice was icy. “My only interest now is in having an explanation for Littlejohn’s interest in you.”

Emily blinked. “You have just told me you did not see or speak with your father for fifteen years because you
assumed
it was something he did which caused your mother to take her own life, but you do not know for certain.” She could only imagine what torment that must have been. “I have told you that my father killed my mother and then himself. And now you ask me about a country parson?”

“Because my mother’s death, or the reason for it, are not relevant to this conversation.”

“You thought it was.”

“And now I have changed my mind,” Xander bit out harshly. “We will return to the subject of the country parson and why he appears to be blackmailing you for some reason.”

She drew in a shaky breath. “Now you are making another assumption.”

“Am I?”

“No,” she conceded heavily. “I… Since Mr. Littlejohn arrived in Ashingdon a year ago, he has prided himself on his powers of observation. Those observations told him that my marriage was…far from ideal. Very well, I was more of a housekeeper and helpmate to Edmund than a wife,” she corrected at Xander’s skeptical glance.

“A servant, in fact?”

“Yes,” she acknowledged quietly.

Xander could not help but wonder at the extent of that servant/master relationship. Emily’s knowledge of physical pleasure was minimal. Although she was proving to be very quick and extremely thorough in her determination to learn! It was ridiculous of him to even think—to imagine that Marsden could have been married to such a young and beautiful wife and not have enjoyed the physical side of that marriage. Of course, Marsden had. He merely had no interest in his wife’s pleasure. Master and servant.

Xander found he disliked imagining Emily in such a subservient role.

He also felt…uncomfortable with having revealed as much as he had about his mother’s death and his estrangement from his father. He had done it for the right reasons, to reassure Emily her own confession had in no way changed his opinion of her. But he now knew Emily well enough to accept she had allowed the subject of his parents to drop for the moment, but that she would return to it again at a later date.