A Highland Duchess (2 page)

Was he correct? Did she have no say in this matter? She’d not been able to convince her father that Anthony was not the right husband for her. Her father had been so pleased to find a duke, no less, who would protect her, who would see to her long after he departed this world, that he’d paid no attention to her pleas.

Had he known? Sometimes, Emma thought her father had died two years after her wedding because of his shame.

“At least this time,” her uncle was saying, “you will have a young man for a bridegroom. Not one thirty years your senior.”

She did not want to talk about Anthony. She didn’t even want to
think
about Anthony.

For all these months, she’d been spared a husband. Now, it was going to happen all over again. She could barely breathe. Was she going to fall into a faint? After the last few years of being resolutely conscious, how very odd to want to collapse now.

Her fingertips felt numb, and her feet were oddly cold. A soft buzz hummed in her ears. Perhaps she was simply going mad. At least insanity would spare her a marriage, would it not?

“I will send for the dressmakers in the morning,” he said. “You will feel better about it once you have a new trousseau.”

“I am in mourning, Uncle,” she said, looking up at him. “Have you forgotten?”

“You are to be a bride again, Emma. What bride wears black?”

One who does not wish to wed?

“It is not proper, Uncle. I can’t marry now. At least not until I have begun half-mourning.”

His narrow face was mottled, his color high.

“When, exactly, will that be?”

“It has only been eighteen months since Anthony passed, Uncle. Another year at least. It wouldn’t be proper to marry earlier than that.”

“Why do you care about propriety, Emma?”

She forced herself to face his gaze. Her face warmed but she didn’t speak. Did he know? Had he known, all these years?

The ice ball in her stomach seemed to crack, causing her to tremble. She held both hands together so tightly she could feel each separate bone.

“You will marry, Emma, and when I decree it, not when you feel it best.”

He turned and, without another word, left the room.

Why did she care what society said?

Because a semblance of reputation was all she had. Because Anthony had stripped everything from her, decency, dignity, pride, and all she had remaining was her reputation for being cool and aloof, above the fray. She was the Duchess of Herridge, Ice Queen.

Anything but Emma, a bride again.

The moment she was alone, Emma lay her head back against the chair and sighed. She closed her eyes and willed the last ten minutes away, but they would not vanish. Nor would her uncle’s announcement.

She’d not even asked her bridegroom’s name. In all honesty, it hadn’t mattered. Marriage had been a hideous experience for her and she would not repeat it.

Emma opened her eyes, put aside her needlework, stood, and walked to the window.

Her suite of sitting room, bathing chamber, and bedroom had been designed for a duchess. The house had been a gift from her father, on the occasion of her wedding. She’d wondered, at the time, if it was a gift of apology, a way of conceding that perhaps his decision to accept the Duke of Herridge’s suit had been a poor one.

What had he known before her marriage that she’d discovered weeks later?

The furniture in this room had come from France, delicate pieces crafted of mahogany with cabriole legs footed with delicate lion paws. A vanity, four-poster bed, armoire, and
prie dieu
furnished the bedchamber, while several tables and a
bonheur du jour
writing desk complete with two secret drawers sat in the sitting room. The upholstered pieces—love seat and two chairs—had been covered in a delicate blue floral pattern she’d selected herself, thinking her father wished advice for his own home. The walls were covered in silk the same color as the background of the floral pattern.

Unlike the homes of her contemporaries, in which fabric draped everything from cachepots to furniture, this room was nearly sparse. Clutter had been set aside for space, and the few items that remained were those reminding her of better times. A pair of Minton Parian figures sat atop the mantel; a large Chinese red lacquer vase sat beside the fireplace.

The day after Anthony’s funeral, she’d left the house he built not long after their wedding, a quite impressive town house not far from here, and moved to this house on Alchester Square. If people speculated on her actions, they’d probably thought that grief had driven her from the home she’d known during her marriage. They would be right in one respect—she couldn’t bear to be around anything that reminded her of Anthony.

Soon after she’d come to live here, her uncle had moved into her home, taken over its management, including hiring a new staff, altering the library to fit his needs, and generally running the establishment. At the time, his presence seemed to fit her plans.

She should have rebelled. Against what? Propriety? Residing with a relative was more acceptable than living on her own. Society? Getting her good name back was the one goal she’d had since Anthony’s death.

If she were proper enough, decorous enough, she’d be accepted once more into society. People wouldn’t stare at her carriage or turn away when she attended a gathering. When her mourning ended, she’d actually be invited to a gathering or a dinner party. Unless society expected her to be more like the Queen, inconsolable since Prince Albert’s death a few years earlier.

Her hand gripped the curtain as she stared out at the square. The night was a stormy one, the flash of lighting against an ebony sky curiously absorbing. The cobbles were wet, and the wheels of the carriages made a
ssshhh
sound as they traveled through puddles. The streetlamps were blurred, shielded behind a curtain of rain.

Emma would have liked to go to the country, to leave London behind, but she wasn’t allowed to leave the city, tethered to this place and her role in life as if a rope were wound around her waist and tied to the foundation.

She didn’t close the drapes. She loved the night, loved the softness of it, the gentleness of the darkness. One of the lamps close to the house was suddenly extinguished, then another. Was the wind truly that fierce tonight? No matter, the watchman would come by in an hour or so and light them again.

Emma leaned her forehead against the glass and wished herself one of the people passing through the square in a carriage. Let her be on her way somewhere, anywhere but here. Let her be anyone but who she was.

If she were brave enough, she might walk among the shadows, become anyone she wished. Someone who wasn’t the widowed Duchess of Herridge. Someone who was simply Emma.

A woman who felt as if she were a spot of blood in a pool of water, flowering slowly before disappearing forever.

What would the world say to know that she’d loathed being the Duchess of Herridge? Her predecessor was reputed to have been a lovely, charitable woman whose death Anthony did not mourn at all. They’d married less than six months after Morna’s death. Perhaps Fate had a sense of humor, after all, or an ironic sense of justice. Society would be scandalized, again.

She sat in the chair beside the window. Dear God, she could not do it. She could not marry again. Did the youth of the husband truly matter?

Anthony was forever dining on oysters and other foods he claimed were powerful tonics for his manhood. He smelled of the sea, a beast of the ocean, equipped with a living trident that wasn’t particularly pleasant.

Please, God, save me.
The prayer was one she’d uttered before, in just such a tone of resignation. Panic, however, laced the words with more emotion now.
Please, God, save me. Please, I beg you.

For most of her life, she’d done what propriety decreed was right. For the whole of her marriage, she’d maintained a rigid control in order to survive what was happening around her. In the last eighteen months she’d become a hermit, a proper and silent ghost dressed in black, not simply to redress the horror of her marriage, but to be overlooked by society.

She knew too much.

For her efforts, she’d been rewarded, not with freedom, laurels, or commendation for her sense of decorum, but with the prospect of another husband, another marriage.

She turned and noticed her reflection in the window. Several tendrils of hair had come loose and were framing her face. Her maid did not have to use an iron on her hair, it curled on its own, and rain only made it worse. She removed the hairpins and her snood.

A gloved hand slammed against the windowpane.

She stared at the window, her heart pounding rapidly from the fright. The hand had abruptly disappeared, and for a moment Emma wondered if she just imagined what she’d seen. No, it had been real.

She stood, quickly walked to the bellpull and was reaching for it when a voice spoke behind her.

“Please do not do that, Duchess.”

She whirled to find a man standing in front of an open window on the other side of the room. He was dressed all in black, not unlike her own garments. But she doubted it was mourning that dictated his attire as much as a wish to escape detection from the watchman.

The intruder was a tall man, too large for her delicate sitting room. Black hair tumbled over his brow and might have softened his features if they hadn’t been so strong. A proud nose, squared chin, and full lips marked his face as one she would not easily forget.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

She pressed her fingers against the mourning cameo at her neck. A solitary adornment in her widowhood, it reminded her of her mother, of her family, and at this moment, her own mortality.

Her heart was beating so quickly that she could hardly breathe. Nor did she think it possible to blink; her eyes were wide open and staring at the intruder.

The rogue had the temerity to smile at her. As if she were impressed by an attractive smile. As if she could ever forgive him this unpardonable intrusion.

“I’ve come for the Tulloch Sgàthán,” he said.

She frowned at him. “The what?’

“The Tulloch mirror.”

She took a step backward, closer to the bellpull. “I don’t care what you’ve come for, leave my house.”

He frowned. “You are the Duchess of Herridge, are you not?”

She nodded.

“Emma Herridge?”

She nodded again.

“Where is it?” he asked, looking around the room.

Dear God, he was a thief.

She had little experience with histrionics. At this moment, however, she was giving some thought to screaming, loud and long, a sound to summon her uncle, if not a footman or two.

The intruder looked as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, because he strode across the room, grabbed her wrist and pulled her closer to him.

“Duchess,” he said softly, “if someone enters this room right now, I might be compelled to do bodily injury to them. Or to you.”

Was this how God answered her prayer?

Chapter 2

S
he wasn’t quite ready to die.

“I don’t know anything about a mirror,” Emma said, forcing a calm into her voice that she didn’t feel.

“It doesn’t belong to you, Duchess.”

Was he not
listening
to her?

“My jewelry is in my vanity,” she said. “You’re welcome to it. Take anything you want. Take all of it.”

She pulled her wrist free, twisted off her wedding ring, and held it out to him. “Take it, I’m certain it’s the equal of any mirror here. Now go away.”

He grabbed her wrist again, walked her over to the window, pushed her into a chair, and sat opposite her.

“I don’t want any of your jewelry. Just the mirror.”

“I don’t care what you want. Leave me,” she said. “Immediately.” She accentuated the command by pointing at the window.

He raised one eyebrow and regarded her almost in amusement, if she read his expression correctly.

“No one told me how beautiful you are,” he said.

She stared at him. Was it entirely proper to accept a compliment from a thief?

“What is this Tulloch mirror?” she asked.

He sat back in the chair, folded his arms and regarded her. It was rather disconcerting to be the object of that direct stare. Now she knew how a pigeon felt when faced with a hawk.

His mouth was full, and easily curved into a smile. His eyebrows were black slashes above eyes so brown they appeared almost black as well. His skin was tan, as if he labored outside when he wasn’t engaged in thievery.

“It rightfully belongs to the Tullochs of Perth.”

“Scotland.”

He nodded.

“My husband’s daughter emigrated to Scotland.”

He smiled at her but she ignored the expression. She was not that easily charmed.