Rose tuned out the excited chatter, staying back, waiting on her own pelisse. She lingered in the hall, tugging on her gloves, grateful the visit had gone so well, but anxiety simmering below the surface. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten her last visit with Antonia.
Surely it wasn’t Emerson. He was much too successful to deal in nefarious fronts. Of course it wasn’t him. She was right, she just knew it.
Gabriella’s voice cut across the hush. “Rose.”
Her shoulders fell, and she lifted her head. Both Gabriella and Rebecca had hung back as well. Their expressions were polite, but their eyes carried the weight of…accusation.
Rose’s pulse tripped. “Yes?”
Rebecca glanced toward the door, ensuring the girls were out of earshot. Then her gaze fixed on Rose. “That warehouse Antonia mentioned…”
Rose forced a light laugh, though it felt brittle and fell flat. “A trivial matter, surely. Mr. Tatton is always dabbling in something. You both know that.”
Gabriella stepped closer, lowering her voice. “Trivial? You went rather pale when she spoke of it.”
“I didn’t,” Rose said sharply—too sharply.
Rebecca’s brows rose. She was becoming quite adept at that duchess-of-the-manner persona.
Gabriella crossed her arms, studying Rose with unnerving calm. “Rose, you must not keep things from us. If Mr. Whitmore is entangled with that place—”
“That ishisconcern,” Rose snapped, then caught herself. She fastened her outer cloak, her voice softening. “It’s true Mr. Whitmore owns a warehouse near the docks. But there are many companies who do as well.”
Gabriella exchanged a glance with Rebecca, silent but full of meaning. Then she sighed. “I suppose. But remember this, dear: Secrecy will destroy trust far quicker than any scandal ever could.”
Rose’s throat tightened. She lifted her chin, determined not to flinch. “We shouldn’t keep the girls waiting. Tonight I shall talk to Mr. Whitmore of these unwarranted accusations. I have no doubt he is innocent of any nefarious doings.” She swept past them to the carriage, though inside, her chest was tight with unease.
Emerson might think the evening his to manage, but her sisters had already pried at the first seam.
~~~
Emerson tugged his cravat into something resembling order, though it seemed determined to strangle him no matter how precisely Amir affixed the knot. With a muttered curse, Amir pulled it free and tossed it atop three others. “You must remain still if I am to ready you in the manner of a gentleman,” hesaid with exaggerated patience. “That is the third cravat you’ve ruined in as many minutes.”
“I abhor the very idea of hobnobbing with a pack of titled fools.”
Amir held up another starched method of strangulation, along with one eyebrow. “Shall I?”
Emerson’s gaze shot to the top of his vanity where Lady Stanford’s note lay, beckoning him. A note that had been presented to him via an immaculately attired Yates, as always, with a silver tray balanced in his gloved hands. Emerson had plucked it from the tray, fully braced for silence, or worse, a curt dismissal. Rose Stanford’s refusals, he was finding, could cut more sharply than a saber.
The words seared his brain with an indelible ink that had startled a bark of laughter out of him earlier that day.
Mr. Whitmore—
You presume. Nevertheless, I shall be ready. At nine, not eight. Do not be late.
—R.S.
“Yes,” he said, softened by the recollection. A slow smile tugged, then deepened until he gave up the pretense entirely.
“The lady has your heart?”
His smile dissipated like a puff of smoke. “She’s playing me, Amir.”
Ben reclined in a chair in the corner, dressed to the nines, watching the scene with unconcealed zeal. “Definitely playing you, Emerson. No sensible woman could see through that facade you bluster about like a medieval shield.”
Amir draped the cravat about Emerson’s neck with a short grunt, which could have been disguised as a laugh, and began weaving the cloth into a complicated bit of twists and turns. “The question is, why do you enjoy it so much?”
That was certainly the question Emerson had been asking himself the last few hours. “Because she hasn’t run. And because at nine o’clock tonight, God help me, I intend to enjoy myself.” The words spilled from him unencumbered, surprising himself and Amir.
