Page 34 of Lady Emily’s Matchmaking Mishap (Merry Spinsters, Charming Rogues #5)

Chapter Seventeen

“What are you doing, Lady Poppy? You just smeared strawberry jam on both sides of the toast,” Lady Jane exclaimed at the breakfast table the next morning.

Emily stared at the toast in her hands, which was indeed thickly spread with red strawberry jam on both sides. A red glob dropped onto her plate, right on top of her scrambled eggs.

“Oh,” she said weakly.

“You’re woolgathering,” Lady Araminta Dalrymple said, with a satisfied note in her voice. “Which is understandable, given the circumstances.”

Emily should have asked what exactly was so understandable, and what circumstances she was talking about, but she was too busy stuffing her mouth with toast in a most unladylike manner to continue the conversation.

A look she couldn’t interpret passed between the three aunts. Emily should have asked herself what that had been about, but she was too busy daydreaming.

Of course it wasn’t love, she’d told herself for the thousandth time that day; a feat considering it was still early in the morning. And the kiss hadn’t really been a kiss. It had all been a game. Nothing more. But she’d spent another night tossing and turning, thinking about it. For heaven’s sake, she had to stop thinking about his soft lips against hers, and how wonderful he had smelled, and how soft his thick hair had felt between her fingers...

And now, what was that? The man wasn’t even here, and her heart was pounding harder than a drummer boy beating his drum on the battlefield. What was it about him that made the pulse in her neck flutter every time she merely even thought of him?

He was her enemy; she told herself for the thousand-and-first time that day. Surely the good Lord couldn’t have meant it quite so literally when he said she should love her enemies. To the point of kissing him in public and, what’s worse, wanting to kiss him again, quite fervently.

Besides: Love?

It was a ridiculous idea.

She stared at the eggs on her plate. One didn’t fall in love like that. She knew that from experience, because it wasn’t the first time she’d fallen in love with someone. No, a long, long time ago there had been someone she’d loved very much.

Look where that had got her.

It had been enough of an experience for her to learn that when she loved, it was long and deep and lasting. The charade they played the previous day hadn’t been just an act. Love, to her, was painful indeed; it involved her whole being, her whole soul, her whole self. It had almost destroyed her when it had ended.

So the idea that she could fall in love with Wolferton—villain! devil! scoundrel!—was, indeed, most outrageous. It was a scandalous thought!

Her shoulders slumped, as she crumbled the toast between her fingers. Looking up, she wondered why the aunts looked so content.

“I would like to get some fresh air,” she announced, pushing back the chair with a force that must have torn a hole in the expensive Aubusson carpet. “Will you excuse me? There is nothing like a brisk morning walk when you are feeling a little tired. Would anyone care to join me?”

“A splendid idea, child. Wipe that pallor from your cheeks. Walking is most beneficial to one’s health,” Lady Dalrymple agreed.

But no one seemed interested in joining her. Cissy said she did not want to take any strenuous walks yet, as she wanted to be able to dance at the ball, and preferred to rest. Miss Ingleton immediately said she would keep her company, and Miss Cowley said she had to prepare her wardrobe for the ball, while the three Pastels hatched a plan to get the housekeeper to show them the house, no doubt with the ulterior motive of ‘accidentally’ running into the Duke somewhere.

Very well, she would go alone then, Emily decided. It was what she preferred anyway, to be alone and stew in her own thoughts.

The morning mist still hung like a gossamer veil between the trees, and the crisp, chilly morning air had brought her to her senses.

It was so strange, on the one hand, how time passed, but on the other, how certain things seemed to stay the same. The smell of the trees, the way the birds chirped in the foliage. The feeling of peace that washed over her every time she stepped into the forest. She quickened her pace and immediately felt herself calming down.

She reached the trunk of the tree in the clearing, and she sat on it. Emily let out a loud moan and hid her hands in her face. “Emily, you goose! Of all the men, why did it have to be him?” What a treacherous heart she had!

He was a duke, and she was a schoolmaster’s daughter. He was at the top of the social ladder, she at the bottom. They were worlds apart.

That was the ultimate truth.

“Emily White, why do you always choose the most unsuitable of men to love?” she groaned, and her words seemed to echo through the forest.

It wouldn’t be the first time. Once, long ago, a wood sprite had swept her off her feet. A forest sprite, conjured from her imagination. Emily had fallen for him faster than one could say cheese crumpet.

It was strange, really, considering that Emily had never even met him. But she had lost her heart to him with astonishing ease. Stupid, perhaps, but she'd been so young, just a child. Could you blame a child for being swept away by the pretty words of a stranger?

She’d tried, oh how she’d tried, to discover his identity. Emily had waited for him for hours in the bushes, but he'd never come. Somehow he always managed to elude her.

Emily sighed, her chest tightening with a pang of something bittersweet.

Fairies and dukes. They were equally impossible to love.

She wasn’t that little girl anymore—the one who believed in forest fairies and clung to dreams spun from ink and paper. But all that was in the deep past, long gone and buried.

The hole in the oak tree was empty, and it would always be empty.

It was time to let go.

The forest seemed to hold its breath, as if listening, the surrounding air impossibly still.

“Goodbye, Fenn,” she whispered.

Emily turned and made her way back to the house, the faint rustle of leaves the only sound as the forest exhaled once more.

When she returned to her room, she found a pair of brand-new, shiny calfskin boots on the floor at the foot of her bed. They were the most beautiful pair of boots she’d ever seen, except for the pair Fenn had given her so long ago.

“Netty, who left these boots here?” she asked the maid.

Netty shrugged. “The truth is, I don’t know, my lady. I had to step out for a moment and when I returned they were here.”

“There was no note?”

“No, my lady. I found them as they are now, without a note.”

Emily exhaled slowly. She turned to the boots in her hands. The leather was soft, and the inside lined with fur. They were perfection. And exactly her size. They’d clearly been made for her.

“Why don’t you try them on, my lady?” the maid suggested.

“I’m not sure they’re meant for me,” Emily hesitated.

“Why else would they be here?”

True.

She unlaced the boots and slipped them on. They fit her like a second skin. They were made for hard walking outdoors and would keep out any moisture and cold.

“Perhaps you have an admirer,” the maid suggested.

“It seems so,” Emily said gruffly.

It seemed that George the coachman had been at work.

Wolferton, she corrected herself. Not George. Must remember that.

Now, he was giving her boots? She tipped up her toes to admire them.

What, exactly, she wondered, did it mean?