“Aye. Where are ye going, lass?” Daniel’s question was for Emma, but his grim gaze remained fixed on Samuel.
“Lady Emma is coming with me.” Samuel wrapped a possessive hand around Emma’s wrist. “I’ll see she’s returned to Lady Crosby.”
Daniel’s eyebrows shot up, but something in Samuel’s face silenced his protest. “Come on then, lass,” he said to Helena, his huge hand gentle on her shoulder. “We’ll see ye put back to rights again. I’ll be waiting for you, Miss Emma,” Daniel added, casting a dark look at Samuel over his shoulder as he helped Helena down the street toward Lady Crosby’s carriage.
By the time Samuel handed Emma into his carriage, she was trembling with exhaustion. Between her chase through the Dark Walk, Samuel’s dizzying kisses in the alcove, the frantic search in Drury Lane, and Helena’s attack, she was ready to collapse.
But one glimpse into Samuel’s cold, shuttered eyes made her heart shrink inside her chest, and she knew, without him saying a word, that the miseries of this evening werefar from over.
* * * *
Since their first meeting at Almack’s, Lady Emma had been lying to him. Dozens, tens of dozens of lies, the web pulling tighter around him with every word out of her pretty mouth.
One some level, perhaps Samuel had known it all along. Somewhere, deep inside himself, hadn’t he been waiting for the truth to come out? He simply hadn’t wanted to believe it could beas bad as this.
But tonight, the truth had slammed into him withbrutal clarity.
“Is your name even Emma?”
It wasn’t what he’d meant to ask. Given the mountain of lies she’d told him, what did her name matter? It seemed a ludicrous place to start. Her past as a courtesan, her relationship to Lady Crosby, her friendship with Helena Reeves, her flirtation with Lovell, hervery identity…
What was a name, when taken against all that?
There was a long pause, then she whispered, “Yes. Myname is Emma.”
“I don’t believe you.” Samuel’s throat tried to close around the words, but they clawed their way from his throat to his lips. How pathetic was it that he doubted her even in this? That he could no longer trust she wouldn’t lie about something as simple as her name?
“Even if it is Emma, it isn’t Lady Emma Crosby, is it? Lady Crosby isn’t your grandmother, and Helena Reeves was never your lady’s maid. You were a courtesan at the Pink Pearl. That’s how you know Helena. Caroline too, I suppose.”
Strange, that there wasn’t any accusation in his voice. There was nothing at all in it—it was flat, inflectionless.
“I don’t know Caroline.” She looked down at her hands. “She’s Helena’s friend. Inever met her.”
It might be the truth, the one small, insignificant truth amid an avalanche of much bigger lies. It hardly mattered. “Your flirtation with Lovell, your interest in him, it was neverreal, was it?”
“No.” Low, nearly inaudible.
For the first time since they’d entered the carriage, he turned and looked at her. She’d crammed herself into the darkest corner, and she looked so small and pale, so lost, nothing at all like the blue-eyed temptress who’d charmed and flirted her way into the dreams of every gentleman in London.
No longer the belle. But then she never had been. Not really.
Samuel’s heart gave a miserable thump at how broken she looked, like a discarded doll, but at the same time he was furious that he could still care for her—could feel anything for her—after what she’d done to him,to his family.
“You feigned your regard for Lovell in order to draw him in, because you thought he’d hurt Amy and Kitty and…what? That he seduced Caroline, then abandoned her? How could you think…why? Why would you suspect Lovell?” Samuel’s voice cracked onthe last words.
“I—” she began, but fell silent again, shaking her head.
Some of Samuel’s numbness fled in the face of her silence, disintegrated in a hot flash of anger and hurt. He thought of Lovell as he’d been at fifteen, right before Samuel had left England, with his sweet smile, his disheveled mop of dark hair and his eagerness, and it felt as if a knife had been plunged into his chest.
Lovell wasn’t a perfect man, no more than any man was, but a kidnapper, amurderer?
The unfairness of it stunned him, stopped his breath.
“Why should it have fallen toyouto determine Lovell’s innocence or guilt? Who areyou, to decide?” Even as the words left his mouth, there was a part of Samuel that hoped she wouldn’t answer. Knowing would only draw him deeper into her web.
“I took an interest in Lord Lovell at the request of Lady Clifford.” Emma’s gaze was on her hands, clenched tightly in her lap.
Samuel stared at her. “LadyAmandaClifford?”
