Page 64

Everyone in Lady Fosberry’s drawing room froze with their faces turned toward the door in a freakish tableau that might have made Emmeline laugh, if she hadn’t been on the verge of casting up her accounts.

Neither Lord Melrose nor Lord Cross were as circumspect as Watkins. Both gentlemen were smiling when they entered the room, but their smiles vanished the moment they caught sight of Lady Dingley and Lady Christine.

No one said anything for some moments, but then Lady Dingley fixed a watery blue eye on Lord Melrose, and drew herself up with all the offended dignity of a lady who thought herself deeply wronged.

“How wonderful to see you looking so very hale and hearty, Lord Melrose. If only I could say the same for my poor, dear Christine.”

If Lady Dingley expected Lord Melrose to display any consciousness of guilt, she was disappointed. He merely offered Lady Christine a perfunctory bow. “I’m sorry to hear Lady Christine is unwell, madam.”

“Well, I don’t see how she could be otherwise, my lord, given the mortifying incidents of the past few days.”

Lord Melrose raised an eyebrow at this, but otherwise his face remained blank. “Mortifying, my lady? I don’t see how.”

“Do you not?” Lady Dingley let out a shrill laugh. “My dear Lord Melrose, there has always been an understanding between our families?—”

“Forgive me, madam, but there is no understanding beyond a hope expressed by my mother when I was no more than a child. I have never offered for Lady Christine. We are not now, nor have we ever been betrothed.”

A shocked silence followed this bald statement. Lady Dingley was speechless, but her cheeks flushed an ominous red.

As for Lady Christine, she hadn’t ventured a single word since she entered Lady Fosberry’s drawing room, nor did she venture one now, but sat as silent as a cipher, her icy gaze moving between Lord Melrose and Juliet.

At one point that glacial gaze fell on Emmeline, but just as quickly dismissed her.

“As the day is so fine, I thought perhaps Lord Cross and I might persuade you and your guests to accompany us on a drive to Greenwich, to see Lady Hammond’s roses.” Lord Melrose turned to Lady Fosberry with a bow.

Lady Dingley was growing ever more infuriated with every word out of Lord Melrose’s mouth, but she didn’t quite dare to challenge either him or Lady Fosberry any further, as both of them wielded considerable power with the ton .

So, instead she set her sights on the only two people in the room she imagined she could bully with impunity. “How kind you are, Lord Melrose, to show such an interest in the, ah…Misses Templeton.”

Emmeline stiffened at the derisive note in Lady Dingley’s voice when she spoke their name, but Juliet made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a smothered laugh.

Lord Cross’s gaze darted to her, and the corners of his lips twitched, but Lord Melrose stiffened, his face going as hard as stone. “The pleasure is mine, Lady Dingley. They’re both charming young ladies.”

“Charming, yes. I believe their mother was thought charming, as well.” Lady Christine said, breaking her icy silence at last, her voice dripping with sweetness even as she shot Juliet a poisonous smirk.

Emmeline went still at Lady Christine’s taunt, all the louder and uglier for the moment of dead silence that followed it.

Had she misheard? Surely, she must have misunderstood…

But no, of course, she hadn’t. In the time it took for her to release one breath and draw the next, she became painfully aware she hadn’t misunderstood at all. If nothing else, she would have known it by the vicious triumph on Lady Christine’s pretty face.

“Is there something you wish to say, Lady Christine?” Lady Fosberry looked as if she’d happily box Lady Christine’s ears, but before two of London’s most elegant ladies could fall into fisticuffs, Lord Melrose stepped into the fray.

And his expression …

Emmeline had never seen a gentleman more infuriated in her entire life.

In the blink of an eye, his easy smile vanished, and his handsome face flushed with outrage.

He stared at Lady Christine for a long, tense moment, every inch the haughty earl, then said in a low, hard voice, “I see I’ve made a narrow escape, my lady. ”

He said no more. There was no need. All the color drained from Lady Christine’s face as she absorbed the full force of his meaning.

“Come, Christine. We have no friends here .” Lady Dingley gathered the tarnished remnants of her dignity around herself, and marched from the room without another word, her daughter in her wake.

Emmeline waited until they’d left the room before sagging against the settee, fearful her legs would buckle beneath her. “Dear God, what a dreadful scene.”

“How dare Lady Dingley and that perfectly awful daughter of hers presume to speak thus to me and my friends in my own drawing room ?” Lady Fosberry’s eyes were blazing. “Vicious chit!”

She went on for some time, railing against the Dingleys and declaring she’d never liked them, until at last she noticed neither Emmeline nor Juliet had said a word.

“Now my dears, you mustn’t take anything those two vindictive females say to heart.

They represent the very worst of the ton .

I know neither of you cares a fig for anything they have to say. ”

Juliet cleared her throat. “Of course not, my lady.”

Emmeline must have risen to her feet at some point, though she couldn’t recall when, because she was standing, her fingers gripping the back of the settee, her gaze fixed on Lord Melrose.

He took a step toward her, his face pale. “Emmeline?”

Emmeline said nothing. She couldn’t speak.

No one, aside from Lady Fosberry, had ever spoken up in her family’s defense. Not the day of the scandal, or any day in the three years since.

Until now.

Tears pressed behind her eyes. She held them ruthlessly at bay, shaking with the effort, but her expression must have revealed her distress, because Lord Melrose turned hastily to Lady Fosberry with a polite bow.

“It occurs to me you all may be fatigued by our drive yesterday, my lady. Perhaps we should put off our visit to Greenwich until tomorrow. What say you, Cross?”

Lord Cross was gazing at Juliet, looking more uncertain than Emmeline had ever seen him. “Yes, of course, if the ladies prefer it.”

“For my part, a drive sounds lovely. It’s a beautiful day, and I won’t let Lady Dingley spoil my pleasure in it.” Juliet gave a defiant toss of her head.

Lady Fosberry regarded Emmeline in silence for a moment, then shook her head. “I think we’d all do better to rest this afternoon, as Lord Melrose suggests. Especially you, Emmeline. Go on up to your bedchamber, my dear. You look pale.”

“Yes, my lady.” Emmeline risked one last glance at Lord Melrose before leaving the drawing room, but she didn’t return to her bedchamber. Instead, she slipped out the door and into the rose garden.

Thankfully, it was deserted.

Lady Fosberry’s gardener had come in this morning and pruned the spent blooms from the rose canes, snipping them just above the foliage so the plant might produce more blossoms. He’d left an orderly row of thriving roses in his wake, the canes standing tall, each one aligned in perfect symmetry with those before and behind it, like soldiers on the march.

If only people would fall into tidy rows as prettily as roses did, but instead of the neat, logical conclusion Emmeline had hoped for, this business only grew more tangled.

Not only had Lord Melrose not forgotten the Lady in Lavender as she’d predicted he would, he was also proving to be dreadfully stubborn about falling in love with Juliet.

Emmeline couldn’t understand it. She’d been so certain putting the two of them together would be the simplest thing in the world, but somehow it wasn’t working out as she’d thought it would.

She wandered toward the stone wall at the back of the garden, her feet silent against the soft ground.

Lady Fosberry had warned her—she’d tried to make Emmeline understand people weren’t logical or predictable, that emotions were slippery, and it was folly to think one could control them.

Emmeline hadn’t wanted to listen, but every day that passed was proving Lady Fosberry had been right all along.

Because ever since she’d kissed Lord Melrose, she hadn’t recognized herself.

She reached out to stoke the glossy green leaves of a fragrant yellow rose at the end of the row closest to her, but the glide of the silky petals under her fingertips didn’t soothe her as it usually did, so she knelt down, heedless of the dirt, and stuck her fingers a few inches into the soil at the base of the plant.

“This isn’t resting in your bedchamber, Miss Templeton.”

Emmeline’s hands stilled for an instant, her breath catching in her throat, but she didn’t turn around. “No, it’s not. I’m afraid you’ve caught me, my lord.”

“I’ve never known another lady who loves dirt the way you do.”

From another man’s lips the words might have been a taunt, but from his they were gentle and teasing, almost… affectionate .

He crouched next to her, watching the movement of her hands. “Will you tell me a little about what you’re doing?”

Emmeline cast a shy glance up at him, then looked quickly away again when she realized how close he was. “Just making certain the soil is still damp. It dries quickly on warm, sunny days like today.”

“Ah, I see. And here I thought you just enjoyed digging.”

Emmeline smiled. “Well, I do.”

His answering chuckle was soft and warm, like a summer breeze drifting over her skin. “What will you do next?”

No one had ever asked such a thing of Emmeline before—certainly not a handsome earl—but when she leaned back on her heels to see if he was making fun of her, she saw by the tender smile hovering at the corners of his lips that he wasn’t.

Not at all.

She cleared the sudden lump from her throat, and tried to return his sweet smile.

“Lady Fosberry’s gardener takes excellent care of the roses, so there isn’t much for me to do, but if this were my own garden in Buckinghamshire, I might walk down the rows to see which have bloomed, and check the leaves for signs of disease. ”

Lord Melrose got to his feet, and held out a hand to her. “Shall we do that, then?”

Emmeline looked up at him, at his handsome face cast in shadows, the sunlight behind him turning his hair a fiery gold, his hand held out to her, and something shifted inside her chest.

It wasn’t painful, but it felt…final, as if it would never shift back again.

She accepted his hand, and they strolled down the rows together, Emmeline explaining how to remove diseased leaves from a plant as they went, and describing how to stake a rose so it might resist buffeting by the wind.

He listened, his head bent towards hers, and soon enough her reserve melted away, until she forgot herself and spoke to him as if he weren’t the Earl of Melrose, or the Corinthian, or the Nonesuch, but as she might speak to a friend.

A very handsome friend, with kind eyes, and a devastating smile?—

“Thank you for humoring me, Miss Templeton,” he said, when they’d circled back to where they’d started.

Emmeline had opened her mouth to tell him she’d enjoyed their stroll when he did something that made her words flutter away like petals scattering in the wind.

He raised her hand to his mouth, his gaze holding hers as he brushed his warm lips against her knuckles.

There was nothing scandalous or improper in it, but Emmeline felt the brief, warm press of his lips deep in her belly, a seductive echo of his mouth gliding across her skin when he’d kissed her neck in the library.

“You won’t forget our ride to Greenwich tomorrow, to see Lady Hammond’s gardens?” He was still holding her hand, and the low, husky timber of his voice pulled another thrilling pulse from deep inside Emmeline’s belly.

She swallowed. “I won’t forget, my lord.”

“Until tomorrow, then.” He gave her fingertips a gentle squeeze, and then he was gone, the wrought iron gate closing with a soft clink behind him.