Page 43 of Lady Like

Emily doesn’t leave her room for days after the steeplechase.

Violet brings up meals on a tray, and tries to entice her into eating, talking, opening her curtains, sitting up in bed, before finally surrendering and offering comfort in the form of lying quietly beside Emily, letting her sob herself to sleep.

It’s not until now that Emily realizes how much of her life in London is tied to Harry.

Everything she has done in London is somehow a spoke on the wheel of which Harry is the hub.

Everywhere she’s ever been is somewhere Harry took her.

The books she’s halfway through reading are ones Harry gave her.

Every dress she owns was worn once on an outing with Harry.

Every dog she sees pass on the street below her window reminds her of Havoc, who reminds her of Harry.

She can’t look out the window at all without thinking of a time she once saw Harry near a window and good lord, the whole goddamn world has been ruined for her. Love is nothing but a kind of insanity.

Since Harry has been pried from her life like a rotten floorboard, Emily is forced too to confront the reality that she has not made any progress at finding a husband who is not Mr. Tweed or Alexander Bolton—and that even her pursuit of the duke dropped off somewhere along the way.

She told herself that everything she has been doing with Harry has been for Rochester, but when she lines them all up and looks from the height lent her by perspective, she cannot deny. It was all just Harry.

And now, Emily will marry a man who will probably throw her down the stairs and barely have the decency to make it look like an accident.

What had she been doing, wasting her time in the city on a woman who could do nothing to secure Emily’s future—only complicate it further by offering glimpses of a life she could never have in the long term?

It’s as though she has been striding confidently through a foggy landscape since she arrived in London, and suddenly the clouds have cleared only for her to realize she has been walking in place all this while.

After a sennight, Violet sits on the edge of the bed and asks if Emily would like her to make arrangements for her return to Sussex.

Emily sits up for what feels like the first time in days. “I can’t.”

“Don’t mistake me,” Violet says. “I am not dismissing you. However.” She reaches into the pocket of her skirt and withdraws a letter. “Your parents wrote.”

“To you?”

“To Martin, and he shared it with me. Apparently he is concerned you’re sabotaging your chances of a marriage by your behavior here, and passed those concerns on to them.

He has no real evidence,” she says quickly when Emily looks alarmed, “other than something about passing your nights with unsavory company, but your parents want you to come home before Tweed catches wind of any of this.” She hands Emily the letter, then adds, “And perhaps some distance from the place where you and she knew each other may help heal a broken heart. Soon you won’t even remember her name. ”

The idea that Harry could be recovered from, love nothing more than a bad cold, makes Emily start to cry again. “I cannot go,” she mumbles. “I still need a husband.”

“You’re not going to find one like this. Let’s get you up and dressed,” Violet says. “Take a bath. Wash your hair. And then we’ll look at the schedule for the public balls. There’s plenty of time to find a husband!”

And Violet, Emily knows, is right. She dries her eyes, takes the hot towels Violet brings her to wrap about her face and take down the swelling, and readies herself to plunge once more into the breach.

Though of course the breach thing is a quotation from Henry V, which reminds her of Harry, so she has one more solid cry.

Then she’s off.

Emily has been so preoccupied by grief that she has garnered no invitations to private balls, nor asked Violet to help with her social connections.

So, at the next full moon, though Violet cannot accompany her due to the baby’s colic, Emily throws propriety to the wind and takes herself to Almack’s Assembly Rooms.

There is little risk she’ll encounter either Harry or Rochester at the public ball.

Though it was Rochester who told her about the ball, now that they are happily coupled and likely swanning around naked on top of his beautiful racehorse together, he has no reason to attend society balls any longer unless it is to flaunt their love.

Which isn’t not something Harry would do.

But hopefully she’ll be too busy snogging Rochester somewhere else.

She dresses in white again—the same simple Grecian gown she wore to the Majorbanks’s.

The yellow dress is at the bottom of her trunk, folded as small as she could manage.

She would have burned it, had it not been so bloody expensive.

She wears her sturdiest slippers too, the ones least likely to torture her feet when she is asked to dance.

If she is asked to dance.

She looks around the crowded hall, trying to smile at anyone whose eyes meet hers, praying she might know someone here who can make introductions.

The clock chimes, confirming she has been standing alone and uninvited to the dance floor for a full half hour.

If no one will approach her, she will take matters into her own hands.

She notices a group of people near her age standing near the punch bowl and starts toward them, intent on introducing herself no matter how forward it seems. She has almost reached them when one of the women catches her eye.

But instead of waving or inviting her over or giving Emily any indication she would be welcome in their company, she nudges the girl beside her and they both turn and stare at Emily.

Emily stops. One of the women puts her fan to her lips to better hide whatever she whispers to the man beside her, who then turns and stares at Emily as well, like she’s a scandalous painting on display in a gallery.

It reminds her of the way people stared at her in Middleham, openmouthed and with no shame, after…

She scans the room.

Her gaze lands upon a pair of gents propped against the wall, pointing openly at her.

And not in a way that says Look at that handsome lady with the great neck, I think I’ll ask her to dance.

More in the way one might point at a two-headed cow—the mix of fascination and revulsion, terrifying to approach but also impossible to look away from.

When Emily stares back at them, trying to look more defiant than she feels, they grab each other and quake with laughter.

Emily can feel her cheeks coloring. The only thing she wants more than to leave is to a way out of marrying Tweed. She’ll just get some fresh air and she’ll return, a new woman.

Turning, she collides with a redheaded gentleman carrying a cup of punch he nearly spills down himself in surprise.

“Oh dear, forgive me!” she cries.

“No, the fault is mine. Though I suppose there are more subtle ways to introduce yourself to a beautiful woman.”

“What?”

“I was bringing you this punch,” he says, his smile revealing gapped front teeth. “As a pretense to make your acquaintance.”

“Oh that’s…thank you.”

“Edward Hughes, at your service.” He extends the second glass of punch to Emily.

Not a lord, no title, at least not one he offered, but his suit looks expensive and his shoes shine, so perhaps there is enough money behind his name to appease her parents—and hell, how she despises this marriage math, a lifelong partnership reduced to calculations.

The chance of love in a marriage had always felt far out of her reach, but she has never been so resentful of its absence.

The best she could hope for was tolerance, and even that had felt a lofty aspiration.

But then there was Harry, and now she knows what it is to want to rearrange the furniture of your life just to pull up another seat to the table for someone to sit beside you.

She hears Harry’s voice in her head: Wouldn’t you rather be ardently and passionately desired?

This is all Harriet Lockhart’s fault. As much as one can be blamed for having excellent forearms and a searing wit and kind eyes and—

“—your name?” Mr. Hughes asks, snapping Emily back to the ballroom.

“Emily Sergeant,” she says quickly, taking his hand. “At your service.”

“Emily…” He pulls back his hand, leaving Emily with hers floating empty. “You’re the lady from Sussex.”

“I…” Emily feels the color leave her face. “Do we know each other?”

Mr. Hughes holds up a finger, as though scolding a naughty child. “No, but I’ve heard stories of you.”

Emily’s heart is in her throat. Is everyone in polite society talking about her association with Harry?

Her rounds at the political rallies or being tipsy on champagne at the theater?

Suddenly the work she thought had been to win Alexander seems to be a tick against her.

“I’m not sure to what you are referring. ”

“You’re the woman who killed her intended,” he says. “Aren’t you?”

Oh God.

Not this. Not here, not now, not again. Not another world shutting its doors to her.

“W-what?” is all Emily manages to stammer in return.

“And you’ve come to London in secret,” Hughes continues, as though she needs her own plan explained to her. “Hoping to trick some poor bloke into marriage.”

Emily feels suddenly light-headed. She’s afraid she might drop her punch glass. That would be a bit too on the nose—her white dress splattered with blood red. “That’s not true.”

“So you’re not the Middleham Murderess?” Hughes asks.

Emily wilts. That horrible name from the local papers—she hasn’t heard it in years, at least not spoken to her face. “I didn’t…I mean, I’m not…”

Mr. Hughes smiles coldly, then takes the untouched glass of punch from Emily’s hand. “Have a good night, Miss Sergeant. Good luck finding a man more foolish than I.”

How do they know? She’s told no one.

No one but Harry.

Panic rises in her throat, quick and overwhelming as floodwaters.

She presses a hand to her mouth, afraid she might be sick.

The edges of her vision wobble as she watches the hateful Mr. Hughes cross the floor and extend his hand to a blond woman who, Emily notes, her panic sharpening into savagery, looks just like her.

How foolish to think she could escape Thomas’s ghost. It has stuck to her like a burr on a woolly jumper, impossible to pull off without leaving the stitching forever mangled.

Perhaps this is what she deserves—fate’s reminder that there’s no escaping her shame.

But Harry had held her gaze while she told her story and had not flinched. Harry had told her she was still worthy of happiness and life and love.

As she watches Mr. Hughes guide his partner onto the floor, Emily thinks how stupid she was to believe her.