“That would be good,” Mrs. Buckley finally said. “Once I have eaten, I am sure to feel far more the thing.”
Emma refrained from looking to the darkened windows. “And after you have slept.”
“Oh! But of course. Look at the time. It is nigh on eleven o’clock now.”
“Settle in, Mrs. Buckley, and I will plump your pillows.”
“You are too good to me, Emma,” she said around a yawn. “I could not survive without you. Is it bad form to be glad you came to live with me when you were forced to sacrifice so much to do so? Of course, I am sorry for…well, we needn’t address old sorrows now. The late hour is making me sentimental. But I am ever so grateful to have you, despite the circumstances which led you to my door.”
Had Mrs. Buckley not recalled herself, she likely would have said she was sorry Emma had made the poor decision to jilt the baron—the man Emma had chosen in favor of Mrs. Buckley’s nephew. Sorry Emma had lost her parents to smallpox only a fortnight after the cancellation of her wedding. Sorry the combined circumstances had caused Emma to lose her family, her money, and her social standing nearly at once.
If not for the kindness of the Buckleys in offering her employment, Emma did not know what she would have done. She owed her life to them.
All of those circumstances had occurred freshly on the heels of rejecting Owen Buckley’s suit, the biggest mistake of her life.
She had not seen him in nine years, and now he would be here in a fortnight.
Emma could not allow her mind to linger on that unfortunate reality. She plumped the pillows and directed Mrs. Buckley to lean back against them, then pulled up her blankets, much asshe used to do with her doll when she was young. Once the drapes around the bed had been pulled closed to keep the warmth inside, Emma blew out the candles on the bedside table and circled the room to blow them out on the other side. She carried her single candle from the room and closed the door behind her.
“Is the missus?—”
“Oh, Mrs. Bates,” Emma said, startled by the voice in the corridor. “You needn’t have waited. She is settled.”
“Very good.” The lady’s maid clasped her hands, the sleeves of her black gown pulling. “The letter. It was from the nephew, was it not?”
Emma secured a composed smile on her face. Owen had been known to this house and the servants asthe nephewfor years. His position was ambiguous. Mr. Buckley had adored him but despised his father, which meant the nephew had only visited occasionally. But when he did, it was for extensive periods of time, to the delight of the Buckleys, and left a lasting impact.
His most recent visit occurred nine years ago and had been of his longest duration, lasting at Buckley Place for nearly a year—long enough to strike up a romance with Emma and ask her father for his blessing on their union.
But there were a multitude of reasons why Papa had not seen fit to give his blessing, and Emma had only done her duty refusing Owen Buckley in favor of Lord Gifford’s suit. The local baron had set his sights on her, and she would have been a fool to turn down the opportunity of an old, noble title. To disappoint her family to such extremes, refuse the money her father had badly needed…when it came down to duty and love, duty had won out.
She’d been nineteen, young and obedient, and left without much choice in the matter—or so she had believed at the time. Now, age and maturity had made her look back through adifferent perspective, and she wondered how differently her life would have turned out if she had engaged herself to Owen instead.
Had she chosen love over family obligation, this house would still have been her home, but she would have been one of the family, not one of the servants.
She had jilted Lord Gifford as well, in the end, but it hardly mattered. Owen had been gone by then.
Puffing a breath through her cheeks, she pushed away the melancholy thoughts and made her way toward her bedchamber. Her room was situated one corridor away from Mrs. Buckley’s because the woman liked to have her close, but it was small and sparsely furnished. Pale green walls were unmarred except for one framed painting of Emma’s family and a small portrait she had done of her house in her youth. The walls signified everything she had lost, a past life that had slipped from her fingertips. The long trunk, single bed, and plain ladder-back chair were the only things taking up space in the room, save for the washbasin and a low stack of books on the mantel.
Emma surveyed the small chamber, her gaze landing on the mirror tacked to the wall. She was acutely aware of how differently Owen would find her when he arrived at Buckley Place next week. Her youthful glow was long since absent, the lustre of her golden hair faded to a muted honey, and her figure no longer had the easy grace of a girl just out of the schoolroom.
If she could disappear before he arrived, she would.
But the problem that had plagued her nine years ago upon the deaths of her parents was ever present today: Emma had nowhere else to go.
CHAPTER TWO
Captain Owen Buckleystepped onto English soil for the first time in nine years and inhaled the cold, briny sea air. It smelled no different from what he’d been drinking in the last five months on the ship, but the familiarity of his own language, bandied between passing sailors and shouted from the men pulling up baskets of fish from a docked ship, pulled deep in his chest.
He was home.
Well,nearly. There was another week or so in a carriage before he reached Buckley Place to comfort his bereaved aunt, and then freedom was his. He had a debt to settle and business to manage for his friend before he could devote himself to his future. But there was time enough for all that. Owen needed to gather investors, after all. If his uncle had left him any amount of funds, they would go far in supporting his dreams.
He might have chosen the army, but he’d witnessed far too many young boys devote their lives to the service against their wishes, and he was determined to do something about it.
“Out o’ the way,” someone called, bumping his shoulder as he lugged a basket of slimy fish across the dock. Owen tippedhis hat to the man, catching only his retreating back. When he turned to pick up his valise, he collided with another gentleman in a gray coat. “Forgive me, sir. I didn’t see you there.”
The man corrected his hat, pulling at his sleeve. “It is no matter. My head was in the clouds.” He stopped, narrowing his eyes. “I say, you look familiar.”
