How Miss Rutherford Got Her Groove Back (9 page)

Emily almost spat out the tea that she’d been drinking, biting down on her tongue instead as she clamped her mouth shut. Her eyes darted nervously toward Beatrice, who was inscrutable as she carefully picked up a plate of biscuits and offered it to the baroness. “Indeed he is,” she replied coolly. “In fact, we saw him just a little over a week ago. We really had no idea that he would be coming to London, but perhaps Francis knew . . . they are after all related to one another.”

“Ah yes.” Veronica appeared as if she was attempting to figure out the exact relationship between her friend and Adrian.

“I did not,” Francis told them bluntly, a dark shadow flickering behind his eyes. “What brings him to London?”

A bright smile spread across Veronica’s face. It was quite clear that she was pleased with the opportunity to tell them all just exactly why Adrian had come to town. Emily shifted slightly in her seat, her nervous demeanor destroying all attempts she was making at looking indifferent. “Well,” Veronica told them, then paused for dramatic effect as she looked at each of them in turn. “He has come to town to make a formal announcement of his engagement to Lady Kate Clemens. It will happen at the Carroway ball, which, because of this new development, is sure to be all the talk of the town—in fact, it is sure to be an event that we must not miss at any cost.”

At that Emily did choke on her tea, setting off yet another bout of coughing.

“Perhaps you ought to see a doctor about that cough of yours, my dear?” Veronica suggested with an appropriate amount of concern. “We don’t want you spraying fluids on people when we’re out in public.”

“I’ll be just fine,” Emily managed to retort with a sharper tone to her voice than she had intended. She couldn’t, however, guarantee that she wouldn’t die of embarrassment. People were bound to talk—after all, gossip was the top priority amongst the
ton
. She could hear them whispering even now, wondering why the woman who had been the closest friend of both the bride and groom was in such a foul mood on such an otherwise happy occasion. They might even go so far as to say that she had ruined the evening for everyone. And those who knew why she wasn’t smiling would be wondering why she had bothered to come at all.

She had been reluctant to participate in Francis’s attempt at making her and her sisters presentable enough to appear at public events. But once she’d been convinced, she’d begun to let the idea of it excite her—if for no other reason than that it stopped her from thinking about love lost. Who would have thought that one of those events—strike that, the most important of those events—would be Adrian Fairchild’s engagement party?

Emily was suddenly in a thoroughly sour mood. She had come to London to escape from Adrian and Kate, yet now she was about to find herself being dragged off to a ball that was intended to celebrate their love for one another, the happiness of their spending the rest of their lives together—a life that she had so abruptly been excluded from.

Emily dropped her head in her hands with a groan. This was turning out to be a very long season indeed. Quite frankly, the sooner it was over, the better, Emily decided.

C
HAPTER
N
INE

“M
ight I have a word with you?” Francis asked as he addressed Emily with an even expression that told her nothing of what he might be thinking. Still, she had a faint idea.

They had just seen the back of Baroness Giddington’s bright blue dress and feathers exiting the door, though not before settling upon a mutually agreeable time for the sisters to join her at the dressmaker’s. The dreaded time was set for Friday morning at ten. Beatrice, Claire, and Emily would meet her there and afterward they would go to lunch. In the afternoon they would have a look at all the invitations together in order to decide upon which to accept.

Before any of this was to take place, however, there was still the small matter of Francis to deal with. And though Emily couldn’t be completely certain, she was still fairly sure that he was extremely annoyed with her. She groaned inwardly as she followed him through to his study, not because she cared if he was annoyed with her or not, but because their conversation promised to be an annoying deterrent from the quiet walk she’d been looking forward to. Partaking in small talk over tea and biscuits with Baroness Giddington had fairly depleted Emily of that day’s pent-up resources for social dialogue. Now she wanted nothing more than to be alone with her thoughts, if for no other reason than to digest the absurdity of attending the Carroway ball.

“Please close the door behind you.” Francis broke the hushed silence. His voice was calm, but lacked emotion—perfectly suited to his character, Emily thought, as she gently pushed the door closed, leaving it slightly ajar for the sake of propriety. Turning around, she saw Francis disappear through a wide doorway, the doors to which had been swung completely open. She followed him, realizing with sudden apprehension that they must have wandered from one house over to the other. Steeling herself, she glanced around the room she was now in, noticing with some interest that Francis had a rather impressive collection of books.

“Have a seat,” he told her as he gestured toward one of two brown leather club chairs in the corner. It squeaked ever so slightly as she did as he had asked. “Would you like something to drink?”

“Would you like to get to the point?” she asked dryly, surprising even herself with her rudeness.

Francis merely raised an eyebrow, put down the carafe that he had just picked up with the intention of pouring himself a cognac, and walked over to the other chair. “Very well,” he said as he sat down next to her, facing her at an angle. “Would you mind explaining to me what the hell it was that you found to be so amusing that you could barely contain yourself in front of Veronica?”

“Veronica?”

Francis gave an impatient wave of his hand. “Baroness Giddington.” He had forgotten that she had been only formally introduced. “Honestly, Emily, if I didn’t know better I would have thought that you were laughing at her.”

“I was,” Emily told him flatly. If she had ever had the intention of shocking Francis Riley, she had, with this declaration, succeeded quite well.

Though he didn’t reveal just how surprised he truly was—not only because she had openly laughed at one of the highest-ranking socialites in London, but because she’d openly admitted to it—his mouth did open slightly and his eyes did take on a look of wonder. It was as if he was seeing her for the very first time. She had always struck him as being the very definition of kindness, yet she had just now displayed a streak of cruelty that he couldn’t understand, let alone like.

“May I ask why?”

Emily gave a slight sigh as she smoothed her dress across her lap. “It’s impossible to explain,” she said, suddenly sounding terribly awkward.

“Indulge me.” His calm tone had slipped, letting a harsher one through. There was no point in pretending—she had truly begun to annoy him.

“It was a case of the giggles,” she told him as seriously as she could manage.

“I beg your pardon?”

“It happens to me occasionally,” she explained. “I can’t help it. Sometimes I just have an uncontrollable urge to laugh, even though my brain might be telling me that there really isn’t anything to laugh about. It was badly done of me. I’m sorry, Francis.”

He looked at her curiously. Who was she? He had never in his life imagined that Emily Rutherford was a lady who was capable of being so forthright. Something had changed. What was it?

And then he realized something. What surprised him wasn’t her demeanor, but how relieved he was to have figured it out. Emily hadn’t laughed out of cruelty. For some inexplicable reason, she simply hadn’t been able to help herself. It didn’t mean that she didn’t like Veronica, or that she even thought that there was something funny about the lady that welcomed a joke at her expense. She had plain and simply had a case of the giggles and it was, as she had plainly put it, impossible to explain.

“Veronica is my friend, Emily,” Francis told her gently. “I will not allow you to laugh at her. Do I make myself clear?”

“But I wasn’t . . .”

“Do I make myself clear?” He repeated the question as his eyes bore into hers, as stern as they could be.

“Perfectly,” she muttered, meeting his eyes with equal severity.

“Are you looking forward to attending your first ball?” he suddenly asked, changing the subject one hundred and eighty degrees. He had leaned back in his chair and appeared, to her surprise, rather relaxed. It was impossible to tell that he had been chastising her a mere moment ago, and it did take a second, possibly two, for her to get her bearings straight.

Taking a deep breath, she let out a rather dramatic sigh, and deciding she might as well forget about her walk, kicked off her shoes and curled her legs up underneath her on the seat. Francis shot her a look that she immediately judged to be disapproving, so straightening her back she primly asked him, “What?”

“Nothing,” he replied. But the tone was there, the tone that implied that it wasn’t
nothing
at all, which of course gave her the immediate need to explain. “My feet often swell,” she muttered. Then, with a more assertive voice, “It’s more comfortable like this, all right?” When he failed to supply her with anything other than a blank stare, she was compelled to elaborate, though heaven only knew why.

“I’m a petite woman. These sort of chairs are made for men—men like you, for instance—who are capable of filling them out. I always feel as if I’m drowning in them, and I cannot slouch back against the back of it—my corset simply will not allow it. Besides,” she continued, “we’ve known each other for years, you and I. I hardly think it makes much difference how I sit.”

A faint smile had begun to tug at Francis’s lips as he envisioned a miniature Emily sprawling about on a giant chair, which was exactly the imagery that she had evoked. But then she had mentioned her corset, and just like that, his mind had stopped, zeroing in on that single word, unable to move beyond it. Still, he looked ready to smile at any moment, except his eyes had taken on a peculiarly distracted look, which in turn made him look like a bit of an idiot.

“Francis?” she asked.

He inhaled sharply at the sound of her voice, then pressed both hands against his eyes, rubbing slightly as if to wipe away the image.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” he told her in a slightly irritated tone of voice.

“Perhaps I should go,” she told him, but he immediately stopped her with a sharp “no” that surprised her.

“I think I’ll have a scotch. Are you certain you don’t want anything?” he asked as he rose to his feet and strode across the room to pluck a half-filled bottle off a table.

“Perhaps a small sherry . . . if you have some,” she replied cautiously. Was she actually about to have a drink with Francis Riley, the one person in the world that she always strove to avoid? It had seemed that he had been on the brink of smiling earlier. She couldn’t imagine why. Surely what she’d said hadn’t been all that amusing. Then again, perhaps it had. At any rate, the thought of making Francis smile somehow intrigued her. The idea that he almost had must surely mean that he wasn’t as mean as she thought. Only happy people with a positive outlook on life smiled. And since he had almost smiled, then maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t nearly as bad as she thought.

The notion startled her so much that she let out a loud gasp, which in turn startled him. He spun around, spilling the sherry that he was in the middle of pouring, to give her a quizzical look.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I just . . . well I . . .” Darn it! Why was it so difficult to think of a plausible excuse? For lack of anything better, she settled on something completely inappropriate. “I just remembered that I mentioned my corset to you earlier, and well . . . it was really very inappropriate of me. You see, I was babbling on and on, and well . . . I’m sorry.”

“And yet you brought it up again,” he scolded, his hand frozen in midair as his mind turned once again toward that word. Once again that ridiculous urge to hold her that he’d felt in the carriage on their way to London swept over him. If only the woman didn’t happen to be Emily Rutherford.

And yet she had changed. He had noticed it before, and wondered what had brought it on.

Upon reflection, he realized that he need only look in the mirror to find his answer. Pain had changed her. It had wiped away the wishy-washiness that he had always deemed to be her greatest flaw, and made her more direct . . . more blatantly honest. Emily Rutherford had been jaded, and for some peculiar reason, he liked her new personality—in fact, he preferred it. It added a sense of depth to her and made her stand out amongst all the other women who always did and said what was proper. Emily Rutherford had begun to speak her mind, and he was intrigued.

“I completely forgot what we were talking about before you spilt the sherry,” she said in a voice that told him that she was annoyed by the fact.

Walking over to her, he handed her the glass and she took a careful sip, the strong liquid, tinged with sweetness, swishing about her mouth before she allowed herself to swallow. She put the glass down on the round table that stood between their chairs.

“I believe you were telling me about your corset . . .” Francis lifted his glass to his lips in hopes of hiding his smirk as he sat back down. There it was again . . . the image of her corset playing havoc with his mind.

“No, no . . .” She waved her hand dismissively. “Before that.”

“Before that you were saying something about your feet.”

“Oh, don’t be daft, Francis,” she exclaimed with some degree of annoyance. “You know perfectly well that I’m referring to what we were talking about even before that.”

Catching the slight look of surprise on his face, she bit her bottom lip. “Sorry, that was rude of me.”

“Hmmm . . . I rather think I ought to be flattered that you feel you know me well enough to call me daft,” he smiled.

He didn’t make an attempt to hide it this time, and as he watched the look of dismay spreading across Emily’s face, his smile broadened even further. He never would have thought that talking to Emily Rutherford could have forced such a change in him. He was suddenly at ease . . . not exactly happy, but at ease enough to smile, and it felt good . . . really good. “What?” he asked her.

She shook her head in bewilderment. “I’ve known you all these years,” she said. “And yet I feel as though I’m seeing you for the very first time. Odd how much a smile can change your entire appearance. I’ve missed that smile, Francis.” She said the last bit more to herself than to him, yet it made him glad nonetheless. Glad that he had somehow managed to alter her impression of him. And it had been such a surprisingly easy thing to do.

“I asked you if you were looking forward to attending your first ball,” he said. “That’s what we were talking about before you mentioned your feet.”

She stopped for a moment to think. “Oh yes, you’re quite right.”

“Well, are you?”

“I suppose I am in a small way . . . all the excitement of it . . . you know?” She paused as the smile slipped from her face. “But I had hoped I’d be able to enjoy it more. The Carroway ball has taken all the fun out of it. I’m already trying to come up with the perfect excuse not to go.”

“Don’t you dare!” Francis exclaimed. “Emily, you won’t feel better by avoiding the issue.” He leaned forward in his chair and set his glass on the table next to hers. “You need to face both of them, to show them that they don’t have the power to break you.”

“How can you possibly presume to tell me what I
need
to do?” She rose to her feet and turned toward the door, her voice even, yet suddenly cold. The spark he’d seen in her earlier had dimmed. Instead she looked tired and worn out—defeated. “What makes you such an expert?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Emily,” he grumbled as he got up. He wanted nothing more than to shake some sense into her. In fact, he intended on doing just that as he reached out, grabbed hold of her arm, and spun her forcefully toward him.

She let out a small gasp—complete surprise evident on her entire face, from her wide eyes to her slightly open mouth.

And then he just stood there, not knowing what to do. He looked down into her deep green eyes, only to discover that they weren’t entirely green—they were brown toward the center . . . golden brown. How could he not have noticed this before, he wondered. Then again, he’d never had the opportunity to look this closely.