She nodded.
“Promise me you will not go out this morning?” he asked.
She nodded again.
“Go back to bed,” he said. “Sleep some more, Emmy. You are quite safe here, I promise you.” He let her go and was about to turn back to the door. But there was something lying on her bed. Something he instantly recognized. His eyes stilled on it. He felt suddenly cold.
“How did Alice’s portrait get here, Emmy?” he asked.
She turned her head to look at it and her eyes widened. Her face paled. She looked bewildered when she turned back to him.
“You brought it here?” he asked, signing to her. “Why?”
She frowned.
Why had she gone into that room? Why had she brought Alice’s portrait here? It was on the bed, hinged to the matching portrait of Gregory Kersey. On the bed she had got out of last night in order to come to him. She had been terribly frightened, her eyes large with terror, her teeth chattering.
“Come,” he said gently, picking up the double picture frame and looking for something to set about her shoulders. But there was no shawl or robe in the room. He put his arm around her and drew her close.
The door to Alice’s dressing room was wide-open. So were the doors into the bedchamber and the sitting room. The bedclothes were drawn back, the sheets creased, the pillows dented. A satin night robe was flung across the foot of the bed.
Emily’s arm came up. Her hand was trembling. She indicated the robe and herself.Mine,she told him by the gesture.
Inside the sitting room the drawer of the escritoire where the portraits had been was wide-open. He set them back inside and closed the drawer.
He turned Emily toward him and lifted her chin. She was very pale. “Laudanum has terrible effects on some people,” he said. “You must not be upset, Emmy. You are not going mad, I do assure you. I am going to take you back to your room and leave you there for a very few minutes. I am going to fetch Anna to you. You are not going to be alone again until you leave Penshurst. I cannot see you like this, always frightened, always pale. I will send you away, and after I have sold Penshurst, I will come for you.”
She moaned.
“I will see you happy again and at peace again,” he said before drawing her close for a few moments. “I swear it, my love.”
He took her back to her room and hurried to knock on Luke’s door. He was going to dress after talking to them and sending Anna to Emmy, and then he was going to talk to Rod, even if it meant waking him up at this early hour. They had business to discuss—the sale of Penshurst.
26
“KATHY?”Sir Henry Verney removed his three-cornered hat when she opened the cottage door. It was very early in the morning. “You wished to talk with me?”
She had sent word the night before with his steward, who had spent the evening visiting her father. He had had the message last night, but it had been too late to come then. He had slept scarcely a wink all night. But if he had expected to be given hope by the first sight of her face, he was disappointed. She looked almost haggard.
“Yes.” She leaned against the door. “I did not know to whom to talk. Papa would be merely upset. It was you or Lord Ashley Kendrick. But I cannot go to him or ask him to call upon me here. He might tell—” She stopped and looked at him with troubled eyes.
Ah, so she had not changed her mind. She had not summoned him to make him the happiest of men.
“Fetch a shawl,” he said, “and we will walk. Eric is still asleep?”
“And Papa too,” she said.
He offered his arm as they walked toward the bridge and was relieved that she took it. They crossed the bridge and turned to walk along the footpath beside the river, on the opposite side from Penshurst park.
“What is making you so unhappy?” he asked her after she had had time to compose herself. “How can I be of service to you, Kathy?”
“I do not know where to start,” she said, looking up at him with liquid brown eyes.
“Wherever you wish,” he said. “I have all morning, all day to give to you if necessary.”
She drew breath a few times. Finally she spoke. “I always assumed that we would marry,” she said. “You and I, I mean. I did not believe the difference in our stations would hold you back and I was... fond of you.”
“Yes,” he said. “I always assumed it too. I loved you.”
