Emma reached out and placed her good hand over his, stilling the frantic motion of his fingers. “I know,” she said softly.
Emmett’s composure shattered. A strangled sob broke from his throat, and he buried his face in his free hand. “They tried to cure me of it,” he choked out, the words torn from a place of old, deep-seated trauma. “Father…the sanatorium. I cannot, Emmaline. I have to marry.”
His body shook with the force of the memory. “He told me I was sick. They all did. The doctors, the priests. They gave me ice baths, Emma, until my skin was blue and I couldn’t feel my own hands. They put…metal to my head, and the world went white with pain. They made us pray for hours, begging God to heal us of our unnatural affections.” His voice broke completely. “I learned to hide it. To pretend. I learned to be a ghost in my own life. But to marry Lucy…to have to pretend every day, for the rest of my life… I cannot do it. I would rather die.”
In that moment, all the petty resentments, all the distance that had grown between them over the years, dissolved. He was not Baron Cresthaven, the family heir. He was her brother, broken and terrified. And she could not let him be alone in his darkness, not anymore. Bainbridge’s proposal had been a map; Emmett’s confession was the courage to use it.
“You are not sick,” she said, her voice fierce with a conviction she hadn’t known she possessed. “And you are not alone.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I am like you. I am…in love…with a woman.”
Emmett’s head lifted, his tear-streaked face a mask of disbelief. “Emma?”
“Last night,” she said, the words coming easier now, a release. “In the garden. With the Duchesse de la Coeur. She…showed me a part of myself I have spent my entire life trying to kill.” She looked her brother directly in the eye, offering her own raw, terrifying truth as a bridge between them. “I am not a ghost, Emmett. Not anymore. And not ever again. And neither are you.”
He stared at her, and in his eyes, she saw not disgust, but a dawning, miraculous recognition. He launched himself at her, his arms wrapping around her in a desperate, clinging embrace. She held him with her one good arm, her face pressed against his shoulder, tears of relief and sorrow for their lost years mingling with his. They were two halves of the same secret, finally made whole.
The sound of a single footstep on the wooden dock made them both freeze.
Amélie stood in the doorway, a silhouette against the bright afternoon sun. She took in the scene—the tearful embrace, the discarded jacket, the palpable air of crisis—and her expression, full of soft concern, faltered. She took a half-step back, ready to retreat, to grant them their privacy.
But Emma could not let her go. Not now. Amélie was not an intrusion; she was part of this. With a bravery that felt utterly new, Emma disentangled herself from her brother and held out her hand. “Don’t go,” she said, her voice clear and steady. “Please. Stay.”
Amélie hesitated for only a second, her dark eyes moving from Emma’s imploring face to Emmett’s ravaged one. Then she nodded, and entered the boathouse, closing the door behind her and shutting out the world. She moved with her usual grace, sinking down to sit on a coil of rope near them, her presence a calm, steadying anchor in the emotional storm.
She waited, her gaze gentle, expectant. Moved by this unexpected sanctuary of acceptance, Amélie began to speak, her voice low, the French accent a soft melody in the quiet space. “When I was sixteen, my father sold me in marriage to the Duc de la Coeur. A man thirty years my senior, whose first wife had died under…mysterious circumstances. He was charming in public. In private, he was a monster who taught me that a wife’s body was a property he could use, and bruise, as he pleased.”
She stared at her own strong, capable hands, resting in her lap. “For ten years, I performed the role of the perfect duchesse. I learned to smile when I wanted to scream, to be silent when I wanted to fight. When he finally died, it was a release. But it was not an escape.” Her gaze hardened. “His son from his first marriage, Armand, believes I stole his inheritance. He is convinced I murdered his father. He has spent years hunting me, using the law, using threats, trying to ruin me and take back what he believes is his. He is a predator, and he will never stop.”
She looked up, her dark, haunted eyes meeting Emma’s, then Emmett’s. “I tell you this because I see in this room the same thing I have lived my entire life. People trapped in cages not of their own making, fighting for a moment of honest breath.”
The afternoon light began to fade, the golden bars slanting across the floor turning to a deep, bruised orange. There they sat, the three of them—the terrified groom, the newly awakened woman, and the hunted duchesse. The secrets that had been poisoning them in isolation had, in the sharing, become the foundation of an unlikely, unbreakable alliance. They were a conspiracy of the broken, a quiet pact made in the dust and shadows of a forgotten boathouse, bound by the shared, fierce, and sudden hope that they might, together, find a way to be free.
Chapter 9
The rehearsal luncheon was a siege laid upon Emma’s nerves. All morning, the house had trembled with the preparations for tomorrow’s nuptials: servants darted like starlings through the corridors, footmen staggered under crates of crystal and linen, and the air pulsed with a nervous, festive energy that left her feeling as if she’d swallowed a handful of bees.
The dining room, dressed in its best for the occasion, was a riot of white damask and flowers. A long table stretched from one end of the room to the other, groaning under the weight of silver, glass, and endless platters of food. Conversation ricocheted from wall to wall—Lucy’s mother discussing the merits of lemon syllabub, a minor lord pontificating about the recent reforms, a flutter of female voices orchestrating last-minute seating changes and menu substitutions.
The noise was unrelenting.
Emma had been placed across from Emmett, presumably so she might “steady his nerves,” as Nora had put it, but the true test of her composure sat at her own right hand: Amélie, the Duchesse de la Coeur, resplendent in a lavender day dress with a spray of violets at her breast. The dress was demure in all the right places and yet, on her, radiated the easy confidence of a woman who had nothing left to prove to the world.
Or perhaps who had proven everything already.
Emma’s body thrummed with last night’s memory, the raw, ungovernable pleasure Amélie’s had coaxed from her. She’d woken at dawn, the sheets twisted around her legs, her skin still tingling from the ghost of those clever, hungry hands. She’d expected the recollection to fade in daylight, to be dulled by the routine of breakfast and familial obligation. It was not dulled. It was, in fact, worse: every glance, every shift of Amélie’s body, every waft of her perfume conspired to drive Emma to distraction.
For the first course—a cold jellied consommé, which Emma loathed—Amélie kept her hands decorously in her lap, her conversation light and inconspicuous. But as the fish was cleared and the next course arrived, a slow escalation began. Amélie’s thigh pressed, ever so lightly, against Emma’s under the table. At first, Emma tried to edge away, but the duchesse only closed the gap again, her leg a steady, insistent warmth against Emma’s own. Then, as the roasted capons were presented with a fanfare of silver covers and unnecessary fuss, Amélie’s hand slipped beneath the edge of the tablecloth.
Emma was so preoccupied with watching her brother—who was sweating visibly into his wine glass—that she did not realize what was happening until she felt the brush of fingertips against her skirt. She started, nearly upending her own glass, and looked down. Amélie’s hand, hidden by the damask, found hers. Their fingers interlaced, the pressure firm and purposeful. Emma’s pulse stuttered; her face flamed so suddenly she feared someone would notice.
She dared a glance to her right. Amélie’s expression was a masterpiece of innocence, her gaze fixed on Mercy, who was animatedly retelling the story of Emmett’s disastrous first attempt at riding a sidesaddle. But beneath the table, Amélie’s thumb moved in slow, devastating circles on the sensitive skin between Emma’s thumb and forefinger.
And she felt each revolution as a direct echo between her thighs.
Emma tried, valiantly, to focus on the conversation. Lucy’s mother was describing in excruciating detail the precise color and arrangement of the rose arches for the garden ceremony. Emma nodded and smiled when expected, but her mind could not seem to form words. Her only anchor was the rhythmic, hypnotic movement of Amélie’s thumb on her palm, and the persistent pressure of Amélie’s thigh against her own.
It was torture.
It was bliss.
