She saw him and smiled, and his stomach gave an alarming twist. “You’re back,” she said. “Did the physician get home safely?”
“He did. And so did I.” He held up the cards. “Do you fancy a game?”
She raised her brows. “Of what?”
“Whatever you like. Vingt-un? Commerce? Loo? Whist?”
“You know all the games, I take it.” She settled herself more comfortably against the pillows. “Why not whist?”
“As my lady wishes.” He settled himself beside her and dealt, the movements familiar by now. “Have you played before?”
She made an inarticulate sound in the back of her throat. “Our circumstances are unfortunate now, but I did not grow up in a barn, Mr Beaumont.”
“You strike me as a very proper young lady.”
Her cheeks reddened, and she steadfastly did not look at him as she thumbed the worn corner of her card. His father would have noted the movement, told Oliver to memorise the individual appearances of the cards and what they were so he might tell others’ hands. Oliver attempted not to watch, rejecting his father’s teachings, but the progress of her chapped fingers over the frayed corner proved too mesmerising to resist. “Not as proper as all that, I assure you.”
Intriguing. But he knew better than to push, so he merely played the first card. “Then I take it you had a happy childhood?”
“Mm.” She played another card, following suit. “For a time.”
“A time?”
“My father and mother loved one another,” she explained, seeming to disappear inside herself to a different place, one that held nothing good. “And they were happy together—my father, the country gentleman, and my mother, the city lady. I used to want to love the way they did.”
Sensing they were on the brink of a confession, Oliver stilled, not wanting to do or say anything that might persuade her not to confide in him.
The silence stretched between them, and he cleared his throat. “But now you don’t?”
Emily glanced at him, her eyes like the grey of an approaching storm, then looked away. “My mother died, and my father lost himself in his grief. Such a love—and such heartbreak. I think that was when I realised love could be poison.”
Oliver almost recoiled. “Poison?”
“Do you not think? When one loves so deeply, they lose their own sense of self. Oh, my father loved my mother. He woulddance her around the room, kiss her hand as though they were meeting for the first time, and deliver outrageous compliments. They were utterly in love, and when he lost her, he was utterly broken.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “I was seventeen, and were it not for me, we would have lost everything. The servants stayed only because I ensured their wages were paid. And when there was no more money, I was the one to speak with them and let them go.”
“Emily—”
“It rather taints the happy childhood memories, don’t you think, knowing what comes after?”
Their entire acquaintance thus far, he had considered her plain, but there was something captivating about the fierceness of her expression now. “And that’s why you have no intention of marrying?” he asked.
“In part, yes. Why should I offer myself to someone who could ruin me so desperately? I have no intention of falling in love with a man who could leave me and destroy what remains of my life. My father was miserable until he died, and I want none of it.” She met his gaze square-on. “So no more talk of marriage, Oliver. Not for me. I won’t marry, and that’s the end of it. Be content with my sister, if she should still want you.”
Isabella. He had almost forgotten about her; she hardly seemed to belong in this farmhouse. If he had been travelling with Isabella, he could guarantee she would not have tramped across the snowy road without complaint. She certainly would not have risen early with a head injury to make breakfast.
Isabella posed herself as a doll, content to be put on a shelf.
Oliver was no longer sure he wanted to put her there.
“Emily,” he said, unsure how to broach the subject, but knowing he needed to, at least a little, dispel the illusion that Isabella was an innocent, virtuous, selfless sister. “When your mother died, what did Isabella do to help you?”
“She was ten years old—she did nothing, and I would not have asked her to.”
He took her hand in his, wishing he could ease the pain of her poor chapped knuckles. “And when your father died? That was only a couple of years ago, was it not?”
“When she was fifteen, still a girl.” A frown touched Emily’s brows. “She is my sister, Oliver.”
“Her hands did not look like this,” he said softly.
