Yes.A simple nod.
Do you want me to sit beside you?Hands pointing to his chest and to the seat beside hers.
No.A shake of the head.I am going to leave.Hands pointing to her bosom and to the door behind her.
It had all been very unobtrusive. No one else had known that they conversed.
Go, then.A smile and a hand wafted toward the door.
Thank you.Fingers touching her lips.
He had watched, troubled, as she left. The serenity she had displayed all evening had been a thing of the surface, rather as her gaiety had been in London. She had shut herself off behind the calm, smiling eyes.
He had failed her, he thought, frowning at the closed door. He should have left Luke to entertain Rod this morning and taken Emmy aside himself. He could not but remember that she had had eyes for no one but him when she had come running into the room, that it was to him she had come, burrowing against him for safety and protection.
And he had a niggling suspicion that he knew what might have happened. Or if not that, at least who it was who had upset her. The imagination could only boggle over the exact nature of the encounter if she had been that frightened by it.
He and Luke had ridden through the village and beyond it. When they were returning, there had been a horse tethered to the fence of Ned Binchley’s cottage. And the owner of the horse had been stepping out through the door as they drew abreast of the gate. Verney. Ashley had not known of his return from London. They had nodded stiffly to each other and exchanged pleasantries. Luke had conversed more easily, both with Verney and with Katherine Smith, who came out of the house behind him. Eric had darted out ahead of them.
“I am to go with Uncle Henry,” he had announced. “I am going to see the horses and the puppies. And Aunt Barbara and Lady Verney,” he had added as an afterthought.
Sir Henry had mounted his horse and lifted Eric up in front of him, and they had all gone their separate ways.
Ashley could not push from his mind the thought that somehow Verney and Emmy had met this morning, and something had happened. He had no evidence, no proof. But he did have a strong prejudice against the man and a conviction that he fancied Emmy. And the knowledge too that he had seduced and irreparably hurt Alice.
He slipped from the room soon after Emily had left it. She was nowhere to be found in any of the rooms where she might have taken refuge for a short while. He climbed the staircase and stood outside the door of her room for a few moments before lifting a hand and knocking. He knew it was a foolish thing to do, of course, when she would not hear him. But perhaps there was a maid in there with her. There was no sign of a light beneath the door, though. After a short while he turned the handle and opened the door gingerly. The room was dark and empty, as he had expected it to be.
She had gone outside, then. It was perhaps a strange thing to do when something—or someone—had undoubtedly frightened her just this morning. And already it was dusk outside. But Ashley knew that Emmy did not always behave as other women did. She drew nourishment and peace from the outdoors. It was quite conceivable that she would have gone out there. Up onto the hill, at a guess. To the summerhouse.
He wondered if she would resent his following her there. Perhaps not. She had come to him for comfort this morning. Granted, she had fought against his concern all day, but probably only because it had been more or less publicly offered each time. Perhaps in the quietness of the summerhouse she would be thankful to lean on him for a while.Besides, he did not like to think of her there alone. Verney would have to have brought Eric Smith back home sometime...
He took candles and a tinderbox with him. He had not thought to take any there before. The sky was clear and would in all probability be lit with stars and moon when full night came on. But even so, he reasoned, the inability to see was undoubtedly disturbing to someone who could also not hear.
It was not quite the thing to abandon his guests, he thought, even though he had had a quick word with Luke. But Luke and Anna were quite capable of being substitute hosts, and Rod’s easy charm had made the gathering a very merry one.
Ashley had gone to India as a very young man, eager to enjoy his work, eager to like the people with whom he would associate there. He had made numerous friends, but none had been as close or as loyal as Roderick Cunningham. He had gone out of his way, it had seemed, after his arrival with his regiment in India, to be presented to Lord and Lady Ashley Kendrick and to establish a close friendship with Ashley. The friendship had never really extended to Alice. She had disliked him.
Roderick was perhaps the only one of Ashley’s friends who had known about his marital problems. Not that Ashley had ever talked of them and not that Rod had ever openly intruded. But there had been quiet sympathy and support. He had excused her when she had deserted Ashley at a ball and gone home alone one night—an embarrassing situation, as she had intended. Rod had reminded him that life had been hard on her, with the still recent deaths of her brother and father. And after Thomas’s birth, he had commented good-naturedly on the fact that heredity often skipped a generation or two before reasserting itself. Somewhere in Ashley’s ancestry or in Lady Ashley’s, he had said with a laugh, there was a redhead. Alice had been even darker in coloring than he, Ashley, was. Yet Thomas had been undoubtedly red haired.
It was Roderick who had first told him that Mrs. Roehampton fancied him and meant to have him. They had laughed over that fact and over Rod’s jealousy—he fancied the woman himself, he said, but she would talk about nothing but his friend. And they had laughed over the numerous provocative, suggestive, erotic messages she sent via Rod. Messages that, unknown to his amused friend, had begun to have their effect on a celibate Ashley. Until he had maneuvered a meeting with the lady at a party.
She had looked him almost defiantly in the eye when they had come face-to-face. “Yes,” she had said.
“Yes?” He had looked back at her in some surprise.
“I can bear it no longer,” she had said. “You have won, my lord. Yes.”
They had made an assignation to meet the following evening—the evening and night that would forever be etched on Ashley’s memory. It had been a night of lust and pleasure and guilt—on both sides, it had seemed. The lady had seemed almost bitter.
“Persistence does sometimes win the prize, you see,” she had said to him at one point. “Your words are as seductive as your body, my lord.”
He had been too caught up in the pleasure and the guilt to question her words.
Rod had known they were together. But he had not uttered a word of censure, even after the disaster. He was the one to come for Ashley, who had had to get out of the woman’s bed to hear the news. He had been a pillar of calmness and strength and efficiency. He had made all the arrangements. He had spoken all the possible consolations. He had provided the alibi—Ashley had been with him all night; they had sat talking and drinking, since Lady Ashley had expressed the intention of staying the night with her friend and had taken her son with her. And finally he had been simply a friend.
“Go home to England, then, Ash,” he had said. “Go to Penshurst. Punish yourself for a while. But not forever. ’Twas an accident. A tragic accident. Eventually you will accept that and forgive yourself. Move away then. Sell the place. Marry again and have a family. Live again.”
And now, soon after his return to England, he had come visiting. It was good to see him again. To know that he was a true friend, that he cared.
