“I hardly mind. We can say Dalston if it pleases you.”
“Nothing about this situation pleases me,” she snapped. “Moreover, I know nothing about the process of marriage. You, as the expert in the matter, should be in charge of deciding these things.”
“I, an expert?”
“More so than I,” she said, curling her fingers in her skirts. “After all, I have yet to meet a man worth marrying, and I do not expect to.”
“Intriguing,” he murmured, leaning forward, his gaze fixed on hers in a way that made her stomach drop. “Tell me, who was he? The man who broke your heart so admirably?”
Chapter Eight
Oliverknewthemomenthe’d asked the question that he had misstepped. The whisky was to blame, or perhaps the aching in his arm; either way, he had erred. Emily’s face flushed, and she glowered at him, her jaw locking. Her grey eyes flashed. If she could have eviscerated him where he lay, no doubt she would have done.
“What is there to say that my resolution is due to a man?”
He held up his good hand in a placating gesture. “Forgive me.”
She rose, her back stiff as she strode to the window and stayed there, staring at the snowy, grey world that lay outside. Dusk would fall soon—perhaps it had already fallen—and already the light was indifferent. Still, it was sufficient to show the way her shoulders hunched and her hands clenched; he doubted it was because of the cold. The last vestiges of daylight illuminated the gleam of pale skin at her neck, but cast her hair into the deep red of autumn leaves, near blending with the gloom. She didn’t look away from the frigid glass, but he saw her shiver.
Regret, a sensation he was rather unused to, made its presence known. But what the devil was he supposed to do? He hadn’t known when he teased her that she was going to react in such a way. But his better judgement notwithstanding—he did on occasion have a better judgement—he wanted to know her story. There were so many scattered pieces of her life she had already shown him; he wished to put them together so he might understand the whole.
But he had gone about finding out the wrong way.
He pinched his nose. “Miss Brunton,” he said.
Silence.
Ignoring the dizzying pain in his arm, he pushed himself up, swinging his feet out of the bed. His stomach revolted, but with some force of will, he was able to stand. The whisky, he imagined, was helping more than he wanted to admit.
“Emily,” he said again.
“Leave me be. I don’t want to speak with you.”
“I’m sorry.”
She remained silent, hugging herself now, those thin shoulders tight. He waited, rolling to his toes and back again, but she made no move to say anything further, or to so much as glance at him. So he retrieved the blanket from the bed and slung it over her shoulders, made clumsy by the use of only one hand. Her small hands came to grip the edges, pulling it tightly over herself.
“I’m going to find Mr Chambers and investigate the possibility of more whisky,” he said, retreating. “And a truckle bed. For me. Don’t argue the point. You’ll find I’m remarkably stubborn when I have cause to be.”
Her sigh sounded as though it came from deep within her. “You ought to take the bed.”
“I told you not to argue.” He made for the door. “Come down when you’re ready,” was all he said as he slipped through.
Emily stared at the frozen glass. Soon, the candle would go out and she would be plunged in darkness, but she didn’t think she’d mind. Maybe she wouldn’t notice. Maybe if her world were black, it would ease the aching emptiness in her chest.
She didn’t think she loved Lord Marlbury any longer, but thinking about marriage—hermarriage—made her think of all the hopes she’d once had. Her innocence, her optimism. Marlbury had exposed her to the world’s cruelty, and soon after he abandoned her, her mother had died, and her father had wasted away.
Love, it seemed, was not the pure, sweet thing she had dreamed of in youth.
No, it came with barbs; either it cut you, or it lingered long enough for the wound to turn rancid. Her parents had loved one another, and that love had ruined her father.
She didn’t know how long she stood there, absorbing the cold until it sank into her bones, but eventually darkness fell, and when the door opened again, her entire body felt stiff. Her head pounded, and nausea swirled in her stomach.
Oliver carried a candle with him, and when she turned, she could see its light flickering across his face. She half expected him to say something, but instead he directed Mr Chambers to place the truckle bed on the floor, as far from the bed as was possible in this small room.
As Emily watched, feeling numb, Mr Chambers built the fire, setting it going merrily, and a maid arrived with her arms full of blankets.
“Thank you,” Oliver said as he gestured for the blankets to be placed on the bed. No wink this time, she noted. Perhaps evenhe accepted that inside another man’s household was a very different place than the tavern. The girls there accepted and wanted his winks, perhaps even supplementing their income by selling their bodies to the highest bidder. And the maid here merely worked as a maid.
