“Hush, Mother,” Meg snapped, her concern for Emma clear. “Emma had every right to lose her senses after that awful scene in the breakfast room.”
James held Emma’s gaze for a moment, hating the pain he saw there, the humiliation, but worst of all…the resignation. She was resigned to a heartbreaking fate, despite his attempt to save her with his announcement. But he was not going to allow that now any more than he had been willing to allow it a moment before. He was going to fight for this woman.
Somehow she had managed to inspire that in him.
“Everyone out,” he said, his tone firm. “Everyone but Mr. and Mrs. Liston.”
He lifted his gaze and met that of each of his friends. And, of course, they understood him. Quietly, they began to hustle his mother and the servants who had trailed in to help to the door. In the end, only Meg stayed of those who had been ordered to leave.
She moved forward and edged James out of the way to kneel beside Emma on the settee. Emma’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry I’ve spoiled everything.”
Meg’s lips parted and she grasped Emma’s hand with both of hers. “You’ve spoilednothing. So there is no need to be sorry. Ever.”
She leaned in to kiss Emma’s cheek, then turned and did the same for James. He read her pointed stare as she did so. The one that begged him to follow through on what he’d claimed in the breakfast room, the one that told him, without words, that he should marry Emma. And marry her quickly.
And perhaps not just for her own good.
He nodded slightly and Meg pushed to her feet. She whispered, “Where is Simon? He wasn’t with the others.”
“Crestwood took a ride,” he said, thinking briefly to his friend’s troubled behavior in the garden just before James’s entire life had been blown to pieces. “He needed to clear his head.”
“Clear his head?” Meg repeated, her gaze lighting with concern. Then she nodded once. “I’ll find him and explain what’s happened. I know you’ll want him to know and to be here with us. With you.”
James smiled at her before she left, closing the door behind herself and leaving him alone at last with Emma and her parents. Emma sat up, waving him off as she slowly got to her feet. When she seemed steady, he spun on Mr. and Mrs. Liston.
“Out with it,” he snarled, barely keeping himself in check. “What did you do, Liston?”
“James,” Emma whispered, and he turned toward her to find her staring at him, eyes wide and filled with fear.
“I’m not going to let him hurt you,” he declared, holding her gaze so that she would see he was utterly serious. She swallowed, her face filled with disbelief that he would champion her, which of course made him want to do it all the more.
He retook his position facing Harold Liston and glared at him. “Talk.”
“He didn’tdoanything,” Mrs. Liston said, gripping her husband’s arm tightly. James shook his head, disgusted that this woman would take her wayward husband’s side over her daughter’s. “Tell him, Harold. Tell him that you only made a good arrangement for Emma, not realizing she had another suitor in the wings.”
Liston’s gaze darted away. “Sir Archibald approached me in the past few days, that’s all. He just wanted to discuss Emma with me.”
It was obvious he was lying. His gaze couldn’t focus, his cheeks filled with color, he was sweating and he drew his arm away from his wife and paced the room restlessly.
James was about to press harder, but Emma stepped forward. Her hands were shaking, but she didn’t look like she would faint again. No, in that moment she looked angry. Righteously angry and utterly beautiful in it.
“What did you do, Father?” she demanded. “Stop lying to James. Stop trying to look like the hero for Mama and tell me the truth. Look at me and tell me what exactly you did!”
“He gambled with you,” came a voice from the door. They all turned and found that Sir Archibald himself was now standing in the parlor entryway. He smiled at the group at large and continued, “And it wasn’t the first time. Just the first time he lost.”
Emma felt an urge to scream. Just sit down on the floor, clench her fists and scream out her rage and pain until it emptied out of her chest and allowed her to take a full breath again. But as she stared from Sir Archibald and his smug smile and back to her father and his sheepish look, she didn’t do that.
Instead she folded her arms and took a long step toward Mr. Liston. She held his gaze—she refused to let him look away—and then she said, “For once in your life, tell me the truth.”
“It isn’tmyfault this happened,” her father responded, throwing up his hands as he whined. “He wanted to play cards, what was I to do?”
“Say no,” James said softly as he stepped up beside her and gently placed a hand on the small of her back.
She looked up at him, thinking of what he’d said in the breakfast room. What he’d claimed he’d asked her, how he’d claimed she’d responded. But he couldn’t really intend to follow through on wedding her. That was madness.
“He’sneverbeen able to say no,” Archibald laughed. “So we played until he’d lost his blunt, and then his horse, and then I suggested a new wager. Emma’s hand.”
Mrs. Liston covered her mouth with both hands, her breath coming hard and harsh now. Emma could see that her mother wanted Emma to come to her, to comforther, but Emma didn’t. She couldn’t. She’d spent a lifetime doing so, a lifetime wiping her mother’s tears as she swallowed her own. In this moment, she had no strength for it anymore.
