My hair is unbound around my shoulders, and beneath my cloak I’m wearing nothing but a nightdress. Faith is a heavy sleeper, but I didn’t want to press my luck.
A twig snaps as someone approaches. “Emmett?” I whisper.
He steps out from the cover of rosebushes. “It’s Lottie’s night off. I’m sorry to make you meet me like this—I didn’t want you lost in the tunnels alone.”
I follow the dark silhouette of his shoulders through the orangery tunnels and up to his room.
He crosses the room to pull a quilt off his bed and wraps it around himself. A disgruntled Pig, who had been napping in said quilt, scrambles to get onto Emmett’s lap.
“Why is it so bloody cold in here?” I ask.
“Couldn’t risk having the servants discover us. I told them to stay out this evening, so no one has made the fire.”
“Why not make your own fire?” I kneel at the hearth and pull away the grate.
Emmett hesitates.
“Oh my god.” I laugh. “You don’t know how.”
“It’s not my fault!”
“Of course it is. Come here.” I wave him over.
He relents with a groan and kneels next to me.
There’s a neat stack of firewood and a box of matches on thehearth. I point to them. “Give me three logs and those matches there.”
“No. See, I tried that already. The logs don’t light.”
I turn to him so he can see the full force of my eye roll. “You need kindling. Did your fancy tutors teach you nothing?”
“If you need an Old English text dissected, I am the boy for you.”
I pull a tangle of grease-soaked rags from the silver tinderbox on the mantel and arrange the logs over them. “Like this. You have to light something smaller first.”
He leans closer, the heat of him suddenly overwhelming despite the cold room.
Snick.
The rags go up in flames quickly, bathing his face in the glow of orange firelight.
He turns to me. “Do all the other daughters of marquesses know how to build fires?” His voice has gone softer. I know what he’s really asking.
I look back toward the hearth. “Only the ones whose household staff had to be let go.”
At first it wasn’t that noticeable. The butler served us at dinner instead of the footmen. Then my mother’s lady’s maid got married and wasn’t replaced. Then the carriage was sold. Then the housemaids went, and things really started to fall apart.
Lydia and I learned to build our own fires, iron our own clothes, and darn our own socks while other girls were sewing lace with their governesses. My mother was very clear that we must keep the state of our household a secret. I hated lying. I never developed a stomach for it, so I let Lydia do it for me.
I straighten my back. “Back to the matter at hand. You and Faith. All your cards. I’d like to see them on the table now.”
He leans back on his hands and stares at the fire. “From the moment I heard this was the season the queen planned to marry Bram off, I knew I couldn’t leave it up to chance. I spent the better part of a year trying to find the perfect candidate. It’s actually what I was doing, that night we met. I was going to meet Christine Cambere, but she was all wrong.”
Everything that happened that night comes rushing back to me, the way he leaned his face in close to mine.You know, you’rereally quitepretty.
No one had ever called me pretty. When they wanted to pay me a compliment, they’d say,Youlook like Lydia.
I don’t understand why I suddenly feel like crying. I smack him in the shoulder instead. “Is that why you asked to call on me?” Is his rakish reputation just a clever misdirection, hiding his much riskier true motives?
