Violet Liston smiled. “Daydreaming about the Duke of Abernathe? Oh, Emma, I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that you caught his attention.”
Emma pursed her lips before she muttered, “Really? I wasn’t aware when you mentioned it ten times last night and at least four this morning.”
“No need to be cheeky,” Mrs. Liston scolded. “The night was a smashing success. You haven’t had so much attention in years.”
Emma frowned, for she couldn’t deny her mother’s charge. After Abernathe had left her, shehadbeen approached by several other gentlemen. Not of Abernathe’s stature, of course, but what her mother would call “viable options.” It had been a long time since her dance card had more than two names on it. Last night, she had ended up with five.
“It was just a few dances, Mama,” she said, pushing her plate away since she had no appetite.
“A few dances is the path to a marriage,” her mother insisted, fisting her napkin in her hand on the tabletop. Emma saw how white her knuckles were, and her frown deepened.
“Don’t buy my trousseau too soon, Mama,” she said gently. “I am still a spinster.”
Her mother turned her face as if that word were a curse. In this house, it sometimes felt like it was. “How can you be so cavalier, Emma,” she snapped. “You know our circumstances. Your father—”
“Is not here,” Emma interrupted. “And has not been here for six months.”
“But he always returns,” Mrs. Liston said, rising to her feet and pacing the dining room restlessly. “And when he does, he regularly brings a scandal with him. We’ve done well covering them up, keeping their glare off you, but there will come a point when I cannot protect you anymore. But if you are already safely married before his next…outburst, then it won’t matter. Youmustsee how important that is, Emma.”
Emma closed her eyes and let out a long breath before she looked at her mother again. “I see how important youfeelit is,” she whispered. “But Mama, what would happen if I simply remained an old maid?”
Mrs. Liston’s mouth twisted in horror and she stepped toward Emma. Her tone grew loud and wild as she cried, “Are you so naïve? The money we have cannot stretch forever.”
“Not in the lifestyle we maintain now, no,” Emma conceded. “But if we stopped focusing on my Seasons and took a smaller home in the countryside—”
Her mother folded her arms. “You do not care about me,” she interrupted, her lip trembling and her eyes welling with tears. “You don’twantto take care of me. You don’tcareif I am humiliated.”
With that her mother rushed from the room, wailing all the way up the stairs. The sound faded away until there was a great slamming of Mrs. Liston’s chamber door. Emma placed her elbows on the table and rested her head in her hands.
She was accustomed to these outbursts from her mother. Mrs. Liston had married the third son of an important family and they had a complicated relationship. When Harold Liston was around, Emma’s mother cooed and purred over him. He could do no wrong.
But when he left, Mrs. Liston suddenly recalled all his many faults. It had never been a secret that she had hoped to elevate herself with the match. But Emma’s father had long ago been cut off from his influential relatives. She and her mother were only on the fringes of good Society.
Emma had always accepted that fact. Her mother could not, and more and more over the years, she had pinned her hopes on Emma’s own future match. The longer Emma stayed unwed, the more frustrated her mother became.
It wasn’t that Emma never wanted to marry from the beginning. She’d had dreams of finding someone nice, someone who cared for her and who she could care for. But the truth of Society had crushed that out of her within her first Season.
Most men cared about what they could obtain from a match. Most women knew how to play the game better than she did. And so her spinsterhood had begun.
If it were just her, she could live with it. She would do exactly as she’d just suggested to her mother and move to a smaller home, stop investing in gowns and other frivolity and live out her life with books and a cat and a good friend or two to call on from time to time.
But the idea of a life lived with her mother haranguing her over her failure to make a good match was not a pleasant idea.
She stood up and paced to the fire. As she did so, her maid, Sally, entered the room. Emma faced her with a sigh. “Let me guess, my mother sent you to me with a message that I’ve broken her heart.”
Sally nodded with a tight smile. “Yes, miss.”
Emma rolled her eyes. “Great God, it’s so predictable.”
“She only wants to see you settled, miss. Happy.”
Emma wasn’t certain that was exactly true, but she didn’t argue. “I suppose.”
“Is it true you danced with the Duke of Abernathe?” Sally asked.
Emma shook her head. Abernathe was so powerful, so charismatic, even the servants got a flutter to their voices when he was discussed. “I did.Anda few others.”
She paused as she considered those words. Her mother had said something about the attention Emma had gotten thanks to Abernathe. And while Emma had dismissed it aloud, she couldn’t pretend that Mrs. Liston wasn’t right. What Abernathe wanted, paid attention to, became fashion. Clothes, drinks…women.
