She lowered her head and looked at her hands for a long time. When she looked up at him again, her eyes told him nothing. They were unlike Emmy’s eyes. There was a blankness in them, as if she had shut herself away from him.
It was the worst moment of all.
But he guessed she had accepted the inevitable. He covered both her hands with his own. “We will marry in three days’ time, Emmy,” he said, smiling at her. “’Twill not be so bad, you will see. I will devote my life to your happiness.”
She shook her head slowly, her eyes still blank.
“You think I should not so devote my life?” he asked her.
She shook her head again. But he knew now that she was not answering his question.
“You will not marry me?” he asked her.
No, she told him quite firmly. She would not marry him. And she motioned away from herself with her hands. She was telling him something she had never told him before:Go away from me; leave me.
•••
LordPowell was leaving. It had certainly not taken him long to have his bags packed and to summon his carriage. Luke and Anna were seeing him on his way—a grim-faced Luke and a tearful Anna. Ashley was careful to stay well out of sight. He was the last person any of the three of them would wish to see at that moment. He had half expected a challenge from Powell, but it had not come. Perhaps he did not know the truth behind his broken engagement after all.
But Luke and Anna surely did. He was standing in the stairway arch when they came inside. Anna bit her upper lip when she saw him.
“Ashley,” she said. “Oh, Ashley, what have you done?” There was no accusation in her eyes, only a huge misery.
“You will oblige me by going to your room, madam,” Luke said, “where you may have some peace. I will come to you there later. You and I will walk outside, Ashley.”
There was chill command in his voice. He was at that moment every inch the Duke of Harndon, the man who had been respected and feared for ten years in Paris for his prowess with sword and pistol. Anna disappeared without another word.
They walked in silence through the rain, which had settled to a steady and chilly drizzle. Luke wore a cloak. Ashley did not. Dampness seeped into his skirted coat, into his embroidered waistcoat and shirt, and into his hair, which was tied back and bagged in silk. He did not even notice. They walked out behind the house, past the hill, to the no-man’s-land between it and the river. They were out of sight of the house there.
Luke stopped and removed his cloak. He dropped it carelessly to the grass and sent his coat to follow it—and then his waistcoat. Ashley watched him, a half smile on his lips.
“Remove yours,” Luke said, ice in his voice. “I am going to thrash you.”
“I’ll not fight you,” Ashley said quietly.
“As you would not fight Royce?” Luke said. “I suppose the bruise comes courtesy of him. I noticed no matching sign of violence on his face when he spoke to me a short while ago. Very well, then. You may take your punishment without defending yourself, if that is your choice.”
Ashley fought only one fight during the minutes that followed. He fought to stay on his feet, not to take the coward’s way out and crumple to the ground to avoid the punishing blows of his brother’s fists. His hands balled at his sides, but he did not use them. Luke’s strength had not diminished with age, Ashley quickly realized, though he was well into his thirties.
Finally Luke took the edges of his coat in both hands and backed him against the lone tree that stood in that barren place.
“She is my wife’ssister,” he hissed. “She is here under myprotection.And yet, under my very nose, my brother has ravished her and ruined her. Be thankful that you will escape this morning with your life, Ashley. You do so only because now she needsyourmiserable protection and because I would not deprive her of that dubious comfort.”
Ashley said nothing. He was concentrating on his physical pain, which was a welcome relief from a far worse pain.
“But by my life I swear this,brother,”Luke said. “If you mistreat her, if you give her one moment of anguish, your life is forfeit. I will not ask if you understand me. You understand very well.”
He released his hold on Ashley’s coat as if he might contaminate himself with such contact, then turned his back. He stooped down for his discarded clothes and began to pull them back on.
“She says she will not marry me,” Ashley said quietly.
Luke paused in the act of bending for his cloak. He turned to look over his shoulder. “What?” he said.
“She says no,” Ashley said. “She is quite adamant about it. I will persist, of course, but somehow I do not believe she will be moved.”
Luke walked toward him and stood examining his own handiwork. Ashley did not avert his face or try to dab at the blood that was dripping from his nose onto his cravat.
“Well, my dear,” Luke said, “perhaps you will be justly punished. Not in being forced to marry the woman you have ruined, but in being forcednotto marry her. I have always had great respect for Emily. That respect has just increased tenfold.”
