“I do hope I am not interrupting anything terribly important.”
Margaret smiled before Emmeline could answer, and that smile was bright enough to be dangerous. “Only kindness, which must naturally seem strange to you.”
Amanda either ignored it or pretended to.
“I was only saying to my cousin yesterday,” she continued, “how remarkable your situation is, Lady Emmeline. So much upheaval in so little time. One does admire your ability to recover from public disappointment so quickly.”
Emmeline felt the strike of it cleanly, but she had expected it. If anything, the expectation made the words easier to bear.
“You are very thoughtful to concern yourself with my recovery,” she said.
Amanda’s smile widened faintly. “One cannot help but be interested when matters unfold so… conspicuously.”
Margaret set down her teacup with a soft click. “And some people cannot help themselves at all.”
“Margaret,” Emmeline murmured.
Amanda’s gaze sharpened. “I only meant that it must be tiring, having one’s private affairs discussed so widely.”
“Yes,” Margaret said sweetly. “You do look exhausted from discussing them.”
Emmeline bit back what might, under weaker control, have become a laugh.
Amanda looked from one to the other and inclined her head just slightly.
“Well. I wish you every happiness, Lady Emmeline.” The words were perfect, but the tone ruined them.
“And I wish you a very pleasant afternoon,” Emmeline replied.
Amanda drifted away again in a cloud of perfume and calculation.
For a moment, Margaret said nothing. Then, “I should like a medal for my restraint.”
Emmeline finally laughed, this time with real feeling in it, though the sound did not last long.
Because even as the brief relief passed through her, the deeper thing remained.
Only five days until she stood beside the Duke of Ironford and gave him her hand before God and witnesses both.
And she still did not know whether, when he looked at her so intently, he was seeing her, or still searching for the ghost of another woman.
“Mind the flowers on the left table. I have no wish to begin married life with dead roses.”
The housekeeper inclined her head at once, though there was the faintest smile at the corner of her mouth. “Of course, Your Grace. And the seating for the wedding breakfast?”
“Keep the older ladies apart if you can. If they are placed together, they will feed on one another before the fish is served.”
That won the briefest flicker of amusement from her before she smoothed it away. “Very good, Your Grace.”
They stood in the morning room at Ironford House, sunlight falling broad and cold through the windows, touching the polished floor and the open lists spread across the table before them. Names, courses, flowers, servants, wines, every practical detail of a day that now stood only days away.
The closer the wedding came, the less these neat arrangements seemed capable of quieting anything in him. He could decide the shade of ribbons, the number of guests, the timing of carriages, and still wake before dawn with Emmeline in his mind and that same sense of tightened expectation sitting beneath his ribs.
“Will there be cake?”
Aaron’s voice came from somewhere near Rowan’s elbow. His hair had already come loose from the neat part Miss Harrow had imposed on it, and his wooden horse was tucked under one arm as if even wedding discussions could not justify putting it down.
“Yes,” Rowan said.
