Rogue Grooms (32 page)

Alex laid his hand over his wife’s, and nodded in agreement. “Indeed, Darlinghurst, we will be happy to see you at any time it is convenient. And now that my wife has arranged everyone’s social schedules to her liking, shall we find some fresh air on the terrace? It has grown quite close in the dining room.”

“A wonderful idea, my dear!” Georgina declared. “We shall all go together.”

Emily watched as Georgina and Alex rose from their chairs and ambled happily away, arm in arm, everyone moving out of the way of their ducal path. Then David’s gloved hand appeared before her, waiting to help her from her seat.

She gazed up at him, and could not help but grin yet again in abject happiness. Her uncertainties about this new David, her fears about what might happen when he found out the fate of his family’s Star, were pushed aside—at least for the moment. For now, for this one evening, she was just glad to see her friend again.

“Shall we join them, Lady Emily?” he asked. “I can send one of the footmen for your shawl.”

She slipped her hand into his, reveling in the feel of his fingers closing over hers, holding them safe. “Thank you, Lord Darlinghurst. Some fresh air sounds most—bracing.”

 

David studied Emily carefully in the flickering light of the Chinese lanterns strung along the Wiltons’ terrace. She appeared to be everything a young English lady should be—serene, polite, charming, and oh so beautiful in her fashionable gown and jewels. Her gloved fingers were light as a butterfly on his sleeve, and her smile was perfect as she chatted with him about a myriad of inconsequential topics—the weather, the Wiltons’ elegant arrangements in their ballroom, his voyage from India and his new London townhouse.

Everything but the things he
really
wanted to ask her. What had she been doing in the years they were apart? She was obviously not engaged, but was there a young swain she favored? Above all, what was it that burned so behind her monsoon eyes, beneath the serene mask of her pretty face?

For there
was
something. He had not imagined the flare of some strange panic in her expression back in the dining room. They had been talking and laughing with her brother and his wife, when suddenly Emily’s eyes widened, her breath caught in a sharp gasp, and she withdrew into some secret room deep inside herself. She dwelled in that room still, despite her smiles and polite questions.

He remembered that she would do that sometimes as a child, when she was roundly scolded by her governess or when the wicked Damien broke one of her dolls. What could be affecting her so now? She was obviously a Diamond of Society, admired and lovely. But something plagued her, something that made her go from laughing and open to quietly withdrawn in only a moment.

He would give his newly acquired phaeton to know what it was, to take the burden from her slim shoulders.

“I trust your mother is well now?” he said, trying to fill the silence between them as they turned and made another circuit of the terrace. Several feet ahead of them walked the duke and duchess, arm in arm, laughing together softly, intimately. “I understood she had an accident of some sort.”

“Yes,” Emily answered quietly. “Many years ago, she was thrown from her horse during a hunt. She has been confined to a Bath chair ever since.”

“I am so sorry, Lady Emily,” he said, chagrined. “I should not have brought up such a painful subject.”

“Not at all! You and your father were always good friends to my parents—it is only natural you would want to know how she fares. And she is very well now. She is at the dower house at Fair Oak now, but she spends part of every year in Bath, taking the waters and enjoying concerts and card parties. She will be happy to hear you are back in England.”

“And I am happy to hear she is doing so well.” Ahead of them, he saw the duke and duchess stop and speak to another group. Soon, he and Emily would not be alone—or nearly so—any longer. He turned to her, and said quickly, “Lady Emily, shall I call on you at three o’clock to go driving with me in the Park tomorrow? I would so much like to hear more about your life.”

She paused for an instant, her eyes wide and uncertain, and he feared he had pushed too much. But then she nodded, and said, “Oh, yes. I would like that very much. Thank you, Lord Darlinghurst.”

“
A
unt Emily, may I go driving in the Park with you, please?” Emily’s little niece, Elizabeth Anne, caught at Emily’s skirt with her chubby fingers and leaned against Emily’s chair in her most beguiling manner. “It is such a beautiful day!”

Emily laid down the book she was halfheartedly reading, but before she could answer her niece’s entreaties, Georgina broke in.

“No, my darling, not today,” she said, barely glancing up from the sketchbook on her lap. Only her tiny, secret smile revealed that she heard all of her cajoling and was vastly amused by it. “Aunt Emily is going on a grown-up outing this afternoon. No little girls allowed. I will stay home, though, and we can have a drawing lesson.”

Elizabeth Anne smoothed her palm over the sleeve of Emily’s pale yellow silk walking dress. “Is that why you are so dressed up, Aunt Emily? Do you have a suitor coming to take you to the Park?”

Emily laughed, and caught up Elizabeth Anne’s tiny hand to kiss it. “You are becoming a wild romantic, my cherub! Just like your mama. I have an old friend coming to take me to the Park, someone I knew when I was not much older than you are now.”

Elizabeth Anne’s brow wrinkled in confusion.
This
did not fit into her
Cenerentola
view of life as one long vista of Prince Charmings! “A child is coming to take you driving?”

Emily could hardly contain her mirth. She pressed her hand to her mouth, and only when she felt she could speak without bursting into laughter did she say, “No, my dove. He was a child many years ago, as I was, but now he is grown up. He is as old as your mama.”

Elizabeth Anne’s green eyes widened. “As old as
that?”

Emily could not help it—she let her laughter run free. “I know, angel. It is difficult to believe.”

Georgina tossed a velvet cushion at Emily’s head, and cried out in great indignation, “Oh, thank you very much, sister dear! If I only had my walking stick to hand, I would hobble my decrepit self over there and beat you soundly with it. But we elderly folk must content ourselves with our quiet seat, where we may nurse our gout.”

Elizabeth Anne glanced from her mother to her aunt, obviously now thoroughly confused. “So, an old person is coming to call on you, Aunt Emily?
And
a child?”

“Neither, my darling,” said Georgina. “Aunt Emily’s caller is a most handsome gentleman of thoroughly youthful age.”

“Ah.” Elizabeth Anne nodded thoughtfully. “Will he bring flowers, then?”

“If he knows what is good for him. Now, leave your auntie alone for a time. You will wrinkle her gown and muss her hair.”

Elizabeth Anne immediately removed her hand from the vicinity of Emily’s sleeve. “Oh, no! You must not be
mussed
when your suitor comes here.” She retreated to the window seat, where Georgina’s white terrier, Lady Kate, was nursing her new litter of puppies. Next to clothes and fairy tales, the pups were Elizabeth Anne’s first priority in her young life.

Georgina laid aside her sketchbook, and leaned over to be sure baby Sebastian still slept in his basket. “He is very handsome, is he not?”

“Sebastian?” Emily said, pretending to be thoroughly ignorant of Georgina’s meaning. “Undoubtedly. He looks just like Alex, or shall in fifteen or twenty years.”

“Of course not Sebastian! It goes without saying that he is handsome. And you know perfectly well who I mean. Your Lord Darlinghurst.”

Emily could feel that curse of a flush returning, spreading warmly down into her ruffled white gauze chemisette. She turned away from Georgina’s searching gaze, and riffled through the pages of her book. “He is not
my
Lord Darlinghurst, Georgie.”

“Hm. Perhaps not yet, but judging from the way he looked at you last night, he very soon will be. Or
could
be, if you wanted him.”

“Georgie! I have not seen the man for nigh on fourteen years. How should I know if I
wanted
him? We are merely two childhood friends becoming reacquainted.”

“Of course, Em. But perhaps, as you become reacquainted, you will find you have things in common. Things that might lead you to—become friends again.”

Emily could not pretend to herself that she had not contemplated the same sort of thing. Last night, and in the carriage coming home from the ball, and alone in her bedchamber, all she had thought about was David. How he had grown into a very handsome, fascinating man. How strong and warm his arm felt beneath her hand as they strolled along the Wiltons’ terrace.

His dark eyes and rich voice, his air of something exotic and undefinable, made all her London suitors fade away into pale nothingness. But . . .

“Our lives have been so very different all these years. Almost as if we lived on two different planets. I am sure that after the Indian ladies he would find me as dull as dishwater.” As washed-out as she thought her English callers.

Georgina gave an indignant huff. “How could he possibly find you dull, Em? You have more wit and conversation that any other miss in London! Not to mention a curiosity and intelligence he could not find anyplace else, as well as your quite à la mode prettiness. I have wished all my life to change this red hair of mine into golden curls. You give yourself too little credit. Once he gets to know you again, he will be
yours
.”

Emily just laughed. She could think of no reply to make, as was so often the case with Georgina’s pronouncements. Emily wished that Georgina’s words were true, but doubts plagued her so that she could not quite believe them. Her life
had
been very different from David’s. And then there was the matter of the Star.

He would ask about it eventually, she was sure of that. The sapphire rightly belonged to him, to his family, and
her
family had done him a great wrong. She could never make the matter of the jewel right for him, no matter how much she twisted herself into knots about it. She would simply have to confess the ugly truth.

But not yet. Not until he asked. For now, she would be a selfish creature and enjoy having his company again.

“Is this him?” Elizabeth Anne cried, pressing her nose to the window. “It must be; he is stopping here. Oooh, he is handsome! But very dark. Do you suppose he stayed too long in the sun, Mama?”

Georgina hurried over to the window beside Elizabeth Anne, pressing her nose against the glass in the exact same manner as her small daughter. “He has been living in India, darling, and sometimes people there
are
dark. Remember the story Aunt Emily has been telling you?”

Elizabeth Anne nodded. “About the blue god with many arms?”

“Exactly. That tale also comes from India, dear.”

Emily smiled at Elizabeth Anne’s memory. Perhaps it was not strictly proper to read wild tales of “heathen” India to an English duke’s daughter, but Elizabeth Anne loved them far above tame Anglo fables. And Emily loved reading them to her—it was good to have someone to share her interest in India with, even if it was just her little niece.

Elizabeth Anne glanced over her shoulder at Emily. “Will he know the blue man, Aunt Emily?”

“No, poppet. The blue man is made-up, remember?” Emily said.

Elizabeth Anne’s face fell in comic disappointment. “Oh, yes. I remember now.” Then she and her mother returned to spying out the window.

Emily took advantage of their moment of inattention to hurry over to the large gilt-framed mirror hung on the silk-papered wall. Her hair was still confined neatly within its pins, her wild yellow curls turned into a few fashionable ringlets about her face, but she fussed with it nevertheless, pushing some tendrils back, twining some about her finger. The faint, light brown freckles that sprinkled across her nose—a legacy of her seasons out in the farm fields, and now the bane of her life—had only been partially disguised by the rice powder she applied this morning.

But there was nothing to be done about that now. Greene, the butler, was already opening the drawing room door to admit their caller. She gave a final fluff to her skirts, fixed what she hoped was a welcoming and
not
maniacal smile on her face, and turned to greet David.

Georgina, always the most excellent of hostesses, hurried to the door with her elegant hand outstretched. “Lord Darlinghurst! How very pleasant to see you again. Will you take tea before you and Lady Emily have your drive?”

“Thank you, Your Grace,” David answered. “That would be most agreeable.” He bowed over Georgina’s hand, and tossed Emily a smile over to where she stood half-frozen by the mirror. And—was that a
wink?
Indeed it must have been!

It made Emily want to giggle like a silly schoolgirl. All of this nervous formality did seem a bit absurd. This was
David
, whom she used to race across meadows and with whom she climbed trees. But she did not yet know how she ought to behave with him. They were no longer children, but there was as yet no guide for what they should be to each other as adults.

So, for now, formal politeness it would be.

“Elizabeth Anne, dearest, ring the bell for tea,” Georgina instructed her daughter, as she led David to a comfortable grouping of chairs by the fireplace. She gestured for Emily to join them.

Elizabeth Anne rang the tasseled bell pull, her wide gaze never leaving their visitor. She had one finger in the corner of her mouth, a babyish habit of which Georgina had long ago cured her, but which sometimes reappeared in moments of excitement. She came to lean against her mother’s knee, and removed her finger to say, “Do you know the blue man with many arms who lives in India?”