“Lud, Theo,” Lady Sterne said, “have you not noticed what Luke is hiding beneath the table by keeping his hands in his lap?”
Luke pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. “My dear,” he said, “I have already explained. I skinned my knuckles while playing roughly with my sons and nephews and even a niece or two this morning.”
“Pshaw!” Lady Sterne said.
“You must talk to Emily, then, Victor,” Charlotte said. “But you must be firm with her.”
“Lookee here,” Lord Quinn said, wagging a finger about the table. His brows were knit together in a ferocious frown, marring his usually good-humored expression. “’Tis my nephy who must be firm with her. And I shall tell him so the next time I see him. Egad, she is such a sweet little gel, and with such speaking eyes. He has doubtless frightened her to death. He has to be made to convince her that he has put behind him grief for that unfortunate wife of his and will devote himself to her comfort. Did he do that this morning, eh? I will wager not, as I live.”
“’Tis a dreadful thing,” the Reverend Hornsby said, “and a reflection on the honor of the whole family. Broken vows, seduction, a refusal to accept the consequences of sin. Pardon me, my love and Anna, but the blame must be put squarely on Emily’s shoulders. It does not signify how Lord Ashley expressed himself this morning, Lord Quinn. The fact is that hedidexpress himself and did offer to do the honorable thing.”
“Perhaps,” Lady Sterne said, “she will change her mind. Ladies like to be persuaded. Perhaps Lord Ashley forgot this morning to mention the fact that he is fond of her. Faith, but ’twould be a disastrous omission.”
“Perhaps,” Luke said, sounding infinitely bored, “we should eat the food that has been set before us. Perhaps we should allow the two people most central to our discussion to order their own lives as they see fit.” He held up a staying hand when Charlotte opened her mouth and drew audible breath. For a moment everyone had a shockingly clear view of the raw knuckles he had skinned while playing with the children. “I shall speak with Emily myself before the day is out. I believe I have some influence with her.”
“Luke—,” Anna said, reaching out to touch his arm.
“Madam.” He turned his steady gaze on her. “Will you have some cold beef with your bread? Or would you prefer the chicken?”
11
EMILYhad changed into the very old dress that had so shocked Lord Powell only the day before. She had taken the pins out of her hair and shaken it loose down her back. She had kicked off her shoes and removed her silk stockings. It looked wet and dreary outside, though the rain had stopped. She did not care. She slipped down the servants’ stairs at the back of the house and out through a side door.
She would not go to the falls. She was not sure she would ever be able to go back there, to the place where she had made the biggest mistake of her life. All of her memories of Ashley would be tied up in that one spot—all of them. Culminating in the memory of how she had hung herself about his neck like a millstone just at the time when she had been trying to free him from suffering.
Gifts were dangerous things, she thought. Sometimes one succeeded only in taking far more than one gave.
She ran lightly in the other direction, across wet and chilly lawns, among trees whose branches dripped large drops of water onto her head and face and arms, and through to the meadow beyond. She had always loved this place—for the opposite reason to her love of the falls. The falls closed her into a small and private world; the meadow opened the world before her in a long and wide vista across fields and distant rolling countryside.
She stood for a long time and gazed at the world beyond herself. At order and beauty and peace. The grass was wet beneath her feet. But she would not be deterred by it. She went down on her knees and then lay facedown on the ground, her head tilted back so that she could gaze across the meadow almost from ground level. She saw the grass and the wildflowers as they would see themselves, rooted to earth and growing upward toward light and rain. She could see droplets of water on individual blades of grass and petals of flowers.
Then she rested her forehead on her arms. Her hands were flat against the ground, her fingers spread. She could feel the world spinning with her. She could feel the pulse of the universe against her own heartbeat. She lay still and relaxed, feeling the connection.
She felt no alarm, no unease when she realized that she was not alone. She did not even move for some time. She knew who it was. He would not disturb her or go away. She turned her head eventually and looked at him. He was sitting cross-legged on the grass a short distance from her. His elegant brown skirted coat and the breeches beneath were going to be soaked, she thought. She studied his battered face—one eye swollen half shut, both cheeks red and raw-looking, a swollen, cut lip. Victor had given him the bruise beneath his jaw. Who was responsible for the rest? Lord Powell? Luke?
“Luke,” he said, almost as if she had asked the question out loud.
She sat up and noticed how her dress was dark with wetness and clinging to her all the way down the front. It did not matter. She raised her knees and clasped her arms about them.
“I saw you from my window,” he said, startling her by signing the words with his hands in the private language they had started to devise long ago, “and followed you. There is no peace for you today, is there?” He smiled at her and then winced before touching a finger gingerly to his lip.
She wondered if Luke looked as bad. Why was it, she thought, that no one had come to beat her? She deserved a beating more than Ashley.
“We need to talk, Emmy,” he said, still signing the words. “It never even entered my head that you would refuse me. And so I nobly blurted out the whole truth to Royce, and he spread the glad tidings to everyone else in the house. Doubtless it did not enter his head either. I have put you in a very awkward position—to put the matter mildly.”
She wished he would stop taking responsibility for her. What she had done she had done freely. He had offered her respectability and she had refused. He owed her nothing else. He owed her nothing at all. She wanted to smooth her fingers very, very gently over his hurt cheeks and lip.
“Ah, those eyes,” he said. “They speak volumes, but sometimes even I cannot translate the language. And we never did invent enough signs for deeper thoughts and feelings. ’Tis not fair that all the burden of listening and understanding be on you. I remember once telling you that I would come back to teach you to read and write. Do you remember?”
He had said it when he was leaving. On that most painful of all mornings—even more painful than this morning.
“Perhaps,” he said, “I should remain here for a while, Emmy, and teach you. Forget about last night. Forget about this morning. And just be dear friends again. Brother and sister, as we used to be.”
She smiled sadly. But she pointed to herself, spread her palms flat before her, and read them as if she were reading a book. Then she dipped an imaginary quill pen into an imaginary inkwell and wrote an imaginary word with a flourish. She looked back at him.
“You can already read and write,” he said. “Who taught you, Emmy? Luke?”
Yes, Luke.
