“But shewillmarry me,” Ashley said. “She has no choice. Neither do I.”
The Earl of Royce went very still and looked at him fixedly for several long moments before coming toward him.
“What exactly do you mean by that?” he asked.
“Just what you think I mean,” Ashley said.
He saw it coming. He might quite easily have avoided it. He did not move, even to the extent of taking his arms from behind him. The back of his head crashed against the door, pain exploded in the right side of his jaw, and his vision blackened for a few moments. He kept his hands where they were.
“You swine!” There was fury and contempt in Royce’s voice. “You will meet me for this, Kendrick.”
“If I must,” Ashley said. “But perhaps it would be more rational to talk business. If I lived through a duel, nothing would have changed. If I died and there were... consequences for Emmy, she would be in an impossible situation.”
He watched the other man fight his fury as he considered the sense of what had just been said. His nostrils flared.
“It was ravishment?” he asked.
Ashley did not immediately answer him. “If she says so,” he said. “You must ask Emmy. But her answer can change nothing. We will marry.”
“Powell may feel less concern than I about whether you live or die,” Victor said.
Ashley inclined his head. “That will be his choice,” he said. “I shall find him as soon as I have left here.”
“No!” Victor said sharply. “You will leave that to me, Kendrick.”
Ashley considered the matter and nodded. “Let us proceed to business, then,” he said, indicating the desk that faced him across the room.
But Victor did not turn. “You will pardon me if we postpone this discussion until later today,” he said. “This matter is hard to digest. And by my life, ’tis hard to accept. ’Tis not enough that you are scarcely out of mourning for one wife, but you must be stealing another from under the nose of a perfectly decent man?”
Ashley’s head went back, but he said nothing.
“If you will excuse me,” Victor said coldly.
Ashley stood away from the door, but he spoke again. “I would have no harsh words spoken to Emmy,” he said. “She is under my protection now, and I will allow no one to upset her.”
The Earl of Royce paused with his hand on the doorknob. He did not look away from it. “Zounds,” he said, “but if you were a man, Kendrick, you would have been there with your wife and child. You would have saved them from the blaze or perished with them.”
Ashley said nothing. His jaw was throbbing like a giant toothache. He did not touch it.
•••
Emilyfound Lord Powell in the morning room conversing with Charlotte and Jeremiah. Emily smiled at all of them and beckoned Lord Powell. He followed her from the room, looking half embarrassed, while Charlotte looked archly at Emily and Jeremiah looked somewhat disapproving.
Emily led the way to the library, opened the door before either Lord Powell or a footman could get there to do it for her, and waited inside to close it. Lord Powell looked decidedly uncomfortable by the time she had done so.
“Good morning, my dear,” he said, reaching out both hands for hers. “How delightful to have a private greeting from you. But we must not be too long alone. We are as yet only betrothed.” He smiled at her.
She did not smile back or take his hands. She reached through the slit of her petticoat to the pockets taped about her waist and removed the letter she had written that morning after she had woken up. She had been enormously surprised to discover that she had slept—and apparently for several hours. She awoke feeling sore and uncomfortable and heavy of heart.
The remorse she had anticipated the night before had been there in full force. Guilt and sorrow and shame—they had assailed her from all directions. But she had refused to lie there and wallow in any of them. She had known what she did. She had known what the consequences would be. She had no right now to nurse her suffering. She had no right to suffer.
And so she had written the letter. And then two more.
She handed the first letter to Lord Powell and noted with a stabbing of pain that he looked pleased.
“For me?” he said. “You havewrittento me, Lady Emily?”
She had not anticipated his expecting that it was some sort of love letter she had written. She lowered her eyes for a moment, but she would not give herself that comfort. She watched him as he unfolded the paper and read, and then watched as his eyes moved up the page so that he could read it again. There was no discernible expression on his face.
