No. No, he could not. But she knew that he would never really see her as anything but that girl—despite what had once happened between them.
He got to his feet and offered her his hand.
•••
“Lud,”Lady Quinn said, seating herself on the empty chair beside Anna and fanning herself vigorously, “there is nothing like a wedding—one’s own wedding—to make one feel like a giddy girl again. It seems almost indecent for people our age to have such a crush of guests.” She smiled fondly at her groom, who was talking with Luke and the Earl of Weims and a few other gentlemen some distance away.
“You look very happy, Aunt Marjorie,” Anna said with a smile, and she leaned over impulsively to kiss her godmother’s cheek. “’Tis what I have hoped for for years. I am so very fond of Uncle Theodore.”
“And you look like a giddy girl, Aunt Marjorie,” Agnes said with a laugh.
“Mercy on me,” Lady Quinn said.
“Or perhaps ’twould be better to say you look like a young bride,” Charlotte said.
“Alovelyyoung bride,” Constance added.
Lady Quinn laughed heartily and turned her attention to a wedding guest who had come to speak with her. The wedding had taken place a mere few hours before at St. George’s, which had been packed with fashionable members of society. And at the duke’s insistence, the wedding breakfast had been eaten in the ballroom of Harndon House. Now the guests were relaxing in the ballroom or wandering out to the garden or into other rooms while an army of servants discreetly cleared the tables.
Lady Quinn turned back to Anna. “Faith, child,” she said, “you must think me totally lacking in a sense of duty. I undertook to bring Emily to town for the Season, yet I have married in the middle of it and now Theo is whisking me away to the Lake District for two weeks. But I would not have consented, Anna—and Theo would not have suggested it—if Emily had not assured me that she wishes to go to Penshurst with you and Harndon. Oh mercy on me, he is my nephew now and told me but an hour ago that I must call him Luke. Emily wrote methreeletters, child. I had to believe that she really wishes to go.”
“She does, Aunt Marjorie,” Anna said. “She wrote to me too. She wants to spend a couple of weeks with me and the children. She misses us, I daresay, as we miss her. But she will come back for the rest of the Season. I can scarce believe the change in her.” She turned her head to look across the ballroom, and all the ladies with her did likewise.
Emily was sitting on a low chair near the French doors, looking elegant and lovely and flushed and very slightly disheveled. Charlotte’s baby was in her arms and showing persistent interest in her pearl necklace. Anna’s Harry was sitting on the floor at her feet, beating some toys with the flat of his hand. Joy was standing at her shoulder, disentangling the baby’s hands from the pearls. Agnes’s youngest was straddling Harry so that he could look Emily directly in the eye and hold her attention while he told her some lengthy tale.
“I cannot imagine, Anna,” Charlotte said, “why you are allowing Emily to go to Penshurst with you. ’Tis most improper. Jeremiah even calls it scandalous. If she is to go there at all, it should be as Lord Ashley Kendrick’s bride. ’Twould be more seemly under the circumstances for her to come home with Victor or with me while Lady Sterne—Lady Quinn—is away.”
“Victor and I would be very happy to have her, Anna,” Constance added.
“Emily is of age,” Anna said firmly. “It is her decision to go to Penshurst. It will be entirely proper. Luke and I will be there with her.”
Lady Quinn looked away from gazing at Emily and saw with some satisfaction that Lord Ashley—no, he was simply Ashley to her now—was leaning against a corner of the mantel at one end of the room, not a part of any group or conversation. He was watching Emily, a brooding look on his face—with a little imagination, one might almost have construed it as a somewhat lovelorn look. And the girl really was showing to best advantage today, Lady Quinn thought, dressed as she was in all her new finery, the sparkle of happiness still in her face, but the warmth of real pleasure back there too as she amused the babies and listened patiently with her eyes to the confidences of the other children.
The situation might just work out well, Lady Quinn mused. And it might well justify the sacrifice she and Theo had made in marrying and arranging a wedding journey right in the middle of the Season.
Some sacrifice! Lady Quinn turned her attention to her new husband. It was difficult to see him objectively as a man of advanced middle years. To her he was still the dashing, handsome, rakish young gentleman with whom she had fallen painfully in love when still married to Sterne. And who had unbelievably—and really quite uncomfortably—fallen in love with her. His eyes met hers across the room and they smiled at each other.
Just like young lovers, she thought fondly, impatient to be alone together.
•••
Itwas the sleepy time of day. And a sleepy kind of day. It was a sunny afternoon, and the inside of the carriage was warm. Anna was nursing Harry, a shawl wrapped discreetly about her shoulders. When Emily glanced at her, she saw her lips moving and a dreamy expression on her face, and figured she must be singing a lullaby. Their mother must have sung her lullabies when she was an infant, Emily thought, before she lost her hearing. She could almost remember—almost, but not quite.
The children were supposed to be traveling with their nurse in the carriage behind, but none of them were. James, who was sometimes troubled by the attention his mama gave the baby, was curled up on the seat opposite, fast asleep. Perhaps the lullaby had been intended for him more than for Harry, who never seemed to need lulling. The other two children were riding, Joy up before Luke on his horse, George with Ashley.
It was a cozy family party that made its way toward Penshurst. And Emily was not without an awareness that the ties might have been even closer—she might have been Ashley’s wife by now. She set the side of her head against the comfortable cushions of Luke’s traveling carriage and gazed out the window. She wished Aunt Marjorie and Lord Quinn had not decided upon a wedding trip. She wished Ashley had not come to London. She wished her life there could have continued for the rest of the Season. She had been wildly happy—or at least had fully convinced herself that it was happiness she felt. If it had continued longer, perhaps self-deception would have become true reality. She was not sure now that she would be able to go back in two weeks’ time.
Viscount Burdett, knowing that she was leaving town for a few weeks and disturbed by the fact, as several other of her gentleman acquaintances had claimed to be, had made her a marriage offer just the evening before. He had wanted to talk with Victor this morning, before Victor left for home. But she had shaken her head quite firmly while smiling fondly at him. He had seen the smile and the fondness and had vowed to renew his courtship when she returned. She had not realized that he believed what they had was a courtship. What a foolish man he was—he had never been alone with her for longer than a few minutes at a time. He could not know if he would find her silence tolerable. He really did not know her at all. She wondered what the attraction was. Novelty?
Anna touched her arm suddenly and pointed through the window on her side of the carriage. In the distance, across a broad park, stood a large and elegant mansion, flanked on each side by equally elegant smaller buildings. Behind them rose wooded hills. When Emily leaned slightly across Anna, careful not to disturb Harry, who was asleep with his mouth open, she could see the spire of a church farther to the east of the house and a cluster of houses that she assumed made up the village.
She sat back in her corner, her head turned so that she could see the house as they drove onward to the village. They would approach it from the side, she realized, not from the front. She had not been quite prepared for the churning of pain and emptiness—and excitement—inside. It was his home. It was where he belonged, where he would be happy. No, where he would have been happy if Alice had returned with him, and Thomas. Ashley would never be fully happy again. This was where she had lived, where she had been a child. And he had loved her and blamed himself for her death. He must find the house more of a punishment than a pleasure, Emily thought sadly.
But this was where he belonged. And for ever after now, she would be able to picture him in his own proper domain. Wherever she was for the rest of her life—on the Continent with Aunt Marjorie, at Bowden with Anna, at Elm Court with Victor—she would have only to close her eyes and see this lovely house and the quiet, peaceful scenery surrounding it. And she would know loneliness. Things might have been so different, she reflected with regret. She might have spent her life here with him, if only the marriage he had offered her had been offered for different reasons.
It was a pretty village, centered on a village green, of which a wide river formed one side and the churchyard another. The houses looked well cared for. Some people on the streets stood still and watched them go by. Several curtsied or raised hands in greeting to Ashley, who was riding just ahead of the carriage, in Emily’s line of vision. Of course, he was already known here. And probably already liked. Most people smiled.
The carriage turned to cross the river, the sun sparkling off its surface. Anna turned her head.
