“I will not ask if she may stay here,” Ashley said. “’Twould be an insult to the love you and Anna have always shown her. I would ask only that you ensure she is left in peace. There are to be no recriminations, no insults, no coldness. She is blameless.”
“And yet, my dear,” Luke said, “she has assured me that she was not coerced.”
Ashley’s jaw tightened. “She was blameless,” he said. “You will promise me something, Luke.”
“I will?” No one looked more haughty than Luke with raised eyebrows.
“You will send for me,” Ashley said, “if she is with child. I will come immediately, bringing a license with me.”
“You are going somewhere?” The eyebrows were still up.
“Where I should have gone as soon as I set foot in England,” Ashley said. “To Penshurst. To Alice’s home. My home. There will be work to do there. A steward has been running the estate single-handed for over four years, since the death of Alice’s brother. ’Tis time I took the reins into my own hands.”
“Yes,” Luke said. “You were always good at that.”
“I will leave at first light tomorrow,” Ashley said. “But ’tis not far. Only in Kent. I can come back here quickly.”
“Yes.” Luke nodded.
“I am fond of her,” Ashley said. “I want you to know that. ’Twas not—ugly. I am fond of her.”
“Yes.” Luke’s eyes coolly examined his face. “You always were, Ash. Fond of her. Sit and have a drink with me. When my eyes alighted on you in the ballroom two evenings ago, and when I had convinced myself that they did not deceive me, I was more delighted than I can possibly express in words. My brother—my only surviving brother had come home. I pictured myself having long conversations with you, taking long walks and rides with you, while our wives and children became acquainted. ’Tis a picture that has been dashed into a thousand pieces since then.”
He came around the desk, set a hand on Ashley’s shoulder, and indicated two chairs by the fireplace.
12
ASHLEYwas leaving. He was going to Penshurst, the estate in Kent he had inherited through his wife. It was not as far away as India. Indeed, it was only a day’s drive away. Closer than Victor’s or Charlotte’s. But Emily knew as she sat on the window seat in her room, hugging her knees, the side of her head resting against the cold glass of the window, that it was as far away as India. Farther. When he had gone to India, there had been the hope, however faint, that he would come back someday. This time there was no such hope.
He would not come back to Bowden. Not while she was there.
It was altogether probable that she would never see him again.
She gazed out over lawns and trees. It was a day very similar to the one on which he had left before. Gray and blustery. She could not see the front of the house or the stables or carriage house. She did not know if he had left yet. She remembered the feeling of panic that had clawed at her stomach the last time. It had driven her finally to rush outside and down to the driveway so that she might hide among the trees and see his carriage pass. She felt the same panic now. But this time she could do nothing about it.
She lowered her forehead to her knees and closed her eyes. This time his leaving had been entirely of her own choosing. And if she had the choice to make again—if he came now to ask her one more time—she would not change it. He was going because she would not have him. Because she loved him.
She wondered if her suffering was sufficient to atone for what she had done to Lord Powell. She did not feel sorry for herself; she deserved this feeling of black despair. She hoped Lord Powell would find someone else. She hoped he would be happy. She hoped he would look back at some future date and be fervently glad that she had rejected him. She concentrated her mind on him, picturing the dark handsome face with its heavy eyebrows and rather large nose and slightly crooked teeth. She tried to analyze why it was that handsomeness did not always require perfection of features. She tried to distract her mind.
Ashley was leaving.
She would never see him again. And if she did, seeing him would make no difference to anything. It would only make her feel worse.
No, there was no worse way to feel.
She had not gone down to dinner last evening. Nor had she joined the family in the drawing room afterward. Anna had come to her later, after she had been to the nursery to feed Harry, and had told her that Ashley was leaving.
“Everyone will be returning home soon, Emmy,” she had said, taking her sister’s hands in hers and smiling her sunny smile. “Everything will be back to normal again. There will be just Luke and me and the children and you—the way I like it best. Even Mother is going, with Doris and Andrew. You can live your life as you wish again. You can paint again. You can be at peace again. You will be happy, Emmy, once the rawness of these few days has passed. Lord Powell was pleasant, but he would not have understood you as Luke and I do or loved you half as much. You did the right thing.”
Dear Anna. No mention of Ashley or of what had caused her to break off her betrothal.
And so today he was leaving. Had left. There had been more than an hour of daylight already. Anna had said he was to leave at first light. He was gone. He was an hour on his way. Emily’s arms tightened about her legs and she squeezed her eyes more tightly closed. Shutting herself in—totally.
The rest of her life had begun. So be it, then. And she would not cower in her room forever or escape outside merely for the sake of escape. She was going to dress respectably, just as she had almost every day since Lord Powell had first arrived, and she was going to go down to breakfast. There was the danger, of course, that everyone would be there. It did not matter. She would go anyway.
“Yass,” she said, getting determinedly to her feet and crossing to her dressing room.
She stood in front of her looking glass. “Yass,” she said. No, it was not quite right. Her lower jaw dropped too far. He should have told her yesterday, as he had told her about thessound. This was the way the mouth and jaw should look. “E-e-e,” she said. “Yess.” That looked better. She would scold him for not scoldingher.She smiled at her image.
