Amanda Scott (6 page)

“If you dare say one more word, Miss Wingrave, I shall probably throttle you,” snapped the earl.

“Oh, please, Emily,” Sabrina begged, “please say no more. The dining table is not the place for such an uncomfortable discussion as this. Indeed, it is not.”

“Don’t see why it ain’t,” Miss Lavinia said fairly. “Most likely place for members of a family to fly out at one another, in my experience.”

Emily said stiffly, “I am not, I thank Providence, a member of Meriden’s family, Miss Lavinia.” Keeping her temper with difficulty, she added, “Sabrina is right insofar as to say that Meriden has no business to be criticizing Oliver at her dinner table. It is the outside of enough for him to disdain Oliver’s clothing at any time, but to be picking at him in front of all of us over so trivial a matter as his having invited—”

“Be silent!” Meriden roared, bringing his fist down upon the table with enough force to make the plates and cutlery jump.

“I will not be silent,” Emily retorted, her tone rising, if not to meet his, at least enough to make herself heard. “You have behaved like Henry the Eighth, threatening—”

“If you dare to imply,” bellowed Meriden, “that I have suggested beheading anyone, my lass, I shall have you bodily removed from this dining room.”

“Oh, no!” cried Sabrina.

“You cannot,” Oliver declared bravely.

“No, of course he cannot,” Emily said tartly. “Really, Meriden, you are too absurd.”

“I told you to be silent,” snapped the earl, “but since you seem to heed no one’s wishes save your own, Miss Wingrave, I take leave to tell you that these last months have improved you not one whit. You are still the same arrogant, sharp-tongued, cold-blooded little witch I kissed last Christmas, and the best thing for all of us would be if you were—”

He had no chance to finish, for Emily rose from her chair in a blind fury and dashed the entire contents of her wineglass across the table, into his face.

Turning on her heel, she snapped over her shoulder, “When you are quite ready to apologize for those insufferable remarks, Meriden, I trust that I shall receive your apologies with grace. At the moment, however, I have nothing more to say to you, nor can I tolerate more of your company today.”

As she neared the door, she heard a growl of rage and the crash of a chair behind her, sounds which made her quicken her pace, but she got no further than the gallery before he caught her. Even hearing Sabrina’s horrified shriek did not prepare her, however, to find herself lifted bodily off her feet and flung over Meriden’s shoulder. The position was both humiliating and uncomfortable. Emily protested vehemently.

Meriden said not one word even when she began pummeling his broad back with her fists and shrilly shouting at him to put her down. He carried her down the stairs to the hall, where there seemed from her unusual vantage point to be a great many more servants than usual. Yelling louder, she tried to kick him but succeeded only in scraping her hipbone painfully against his shoulder. There would be a bruise there, she was sure.

“Put me down!” she cried, flailing at him with her fists again, this time getting in a good, solid hit on his spine that rattled her knuckles. His response was a hard smack of his free hand to that portion of her anatomy that was uppermost. “You villain,” she yelped, “put me down this instant! Oh, what are you about?”

He had carried her outside and down the broad front steps. She saw the pebbled drive beneath her, then the smooth green lawn. They were headed downhill. She caught a quick glimpse of Miss Lavinia’s knot garden and the little marble temple beyond the footbridge before she felt his muscles tense and experienced a sudden, clear knowledge of what he intended to do. He lifted her from his shoulder, and as she sailed through the air, she let out a scream of rage, only to find her open mouth filled with icy water when she splashed into the lake and sank forthwith.

She came up sputtering and spitting, gasping with the cold, her hair wrapping itself in wet ropes across her face, her silk skirts billowing around her legs one minute, then clinging heavily to them the next. Behind Meriden, hurrying down the lawn, she could see her sister and several others.

“That ought to cool you off!” the earl shouted. “Don’t you ever do such a thing to me again, my lass, or it will be much the worse for you.”

Emily opened her mouth to shout a reply in kind, but her gyrations had stirred the water and she only swallowed more of it. Her skirts were interfering with the movements of her legs now, so she ducked underwater to do what she could do to make it easier to swim, realizing as she did so that the lake was deeper than she had expected it to be, and colder. And the earl, in his fury, had hurled her a good many feet from shore.

Coming up for air, she saw that he was frowning. Indeed, he looked worried, she thought, almost as if he might think she …

She screamed, flailing her arms, letting herself sink again, then kicked wildly, surging upward, shouting as soon as she was clear of the water, “Jack, help me! I can’t touch bottom. Oh, help me! Help me!”

She let the last words end in a watery gurgle, but she needn’t have worried. Meriden didn’t so much as pause to take his boots off before plunging into the icy water after her. She soon felt his strong grip on her upper arm, and then she was raised up out of the water in much less time than she had thought it would take him. With no real effort at all, Meriden swam with her to the shore and hauled her out.

“My God, Emmy,” he said remorsefully, “I never thought.” Turning his head, he shouted, “Here, someone, run get a blanket!” and then turned back to her. “How could I have done such a thing? You act as if you can do anything at all. I never thought for a moment that you couldn’t swim.”

“But she can swim,” said Dolly clearly above her mother’s agitated reproaches. Sabrina was demanding to know at one and the same time what had possessed Jack and why Emily had dared to do such an uncivil thing as to throw her wine at him. No one heeded her, however, for Dolly, who was standing behind Jack, gazing down at Emily, went right on in that same ingenuous tone, “Don’t you remember, Aunt Emily? You told me your brothers had taught you to swim when you were a child.”

Emily had turned her face into the earl’s shoulder in order to keep from betraying her rising mirth, but any inclination she felt to laugh dissipated abruptly when she felt Meriden go still upon hearing Dolly’s innocent words. She didn’t move either. Indeed, she tried very hard not even to breathe.

“Look at me,” Meriden commanded in a tone that told her she had better obey him, and at once. When she had done so, he asked, “Is that true?”

Swallowing carefully, Emily realized she was more aware of his size at that moment than she had ever been before. Nodding slowly, she said with as much dignity as she could muster, “It is true that I can swim, sir, but—”

She got no further before Meriden threw her back in.

The only difference this time was that the water felt a degree warmer and she thought he had flung her a few yards farther. When she surfaced, sputtering, the earl was already striding up the lawn, his buckskins clinging damply to his heavily muscled thighs. He had taken off his coat, which hung limply over his arm. By the time she had swum to shore, he had altered his course, heading not for the house but for the stables, anger showing in every line of his body. Shivering in the chilly air, Emily thought of the ride he had ahead of him.

“I hope he catches the ague,” she muttered wrathfully.

“Oh, he won’t,” Dolly said, offering Emily the pink shawl she had left behind. “Cousin Jack is never ill. He said he got sick once at school but didn’t care for all the fuss, so he never did so again.”

“Well, he’s likely to take a chill at least if he rides any distance in those clothes,” Emily said, not without a certain amount of grim satisfaction.

Oliver said, “He won’t ride home in them. He will get dry clothes from one of the men in the stables if he can find one whose rags he can squeeze himself into. Oh, indeed,” he added, laughing at Emily’s astonished expression, “I tell you the man never cares a whit for what he looks like. None of the lads is nearly as big as he is. No one hereabouts is. Here, that shawl is useless, ma’am. Take my coat before you freeze.”

Sabrina said, “You are wrong, Oliver. You forget Mr. Scopwick.” She looked at Emily, her blue eyes dancing. “He is a cousin of Miss Lavinia’s and our local vicar, a most formidable man. I promise you, my dear, he would be better named Goliath than Scopwick, for his clothes would hang even on Jack. But come now, you must hurry inside and change into dry clothes yourself. I fear your lovely dress is ruined, but no doubt Meriden will buy you a new one when he regains control of his temper.”

“Sabrina, don’t talk nonsense,” Emily said, gratefully wrapping Oliver’s heavy purple coat around her shoulders and gathering up enough wet skirt to enable her to walk up the grassy hill. After some moments of squishing discomfort, she bent down and removed her sandals, which, tied as they were around her ankles, had neither impeded her swimming nor come loose in the water. Carrying them by their strings, she followed the others across the lawn, only to wish she had not removed them at all when she reached the pebbled drive.

“Emily,” Sabrina said, watching her pick her way carefully over the stones, “I do wish you had not come to cuffs with Jack like that. It makes matters very awkward.”

Oliver said grimly, “I, for one, think she did exactly the right thing, calling him to account as she did. I only wish I might have stopped him from throwing her in the lake.”

“You didn’t even try,” Emily pointed out caustically as she reached the steps at last. “Not either time.”

“But what could I have done?” Oliver asked. “Cousin Jack spars with Gentleman Jackson in London, and the only one around here who can give him a match is Harry Enderby, so you cannot have expected me to knock him down. I’ve no pistol or sword by me at the moment, and I am not such a gudgeon as to challenge him with either one, so what ought I to have done, if you please?”

“Nothing at all,” Emily admitted, smiling ruefully at him. “I ought not to have teased you, Oliver. The fight was my own, and so, rightly, were the consequences. When I lost my temper, however, I never expected such a violent reaction.”

“Dear Emily,” said Sabrina, following her into the hall, “pray tell me you will apologize to him tomorrow. I cannot bear it if the pair of you remain at outs with each other.”

“No, Mama, that is too bad of you.” Oliver was clearly aroused. “Aunt Emily is the injured party. You cannot say that a glass of wine is worse than a lakeful of water.”

“But then she said she couldn’t swim,” Dolly pointed out, “and he jumped in and got all wet. I do not think he was pleased to discover that she could swim after all, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” retorted her brother, “and I cannot think how you could have been such a blockhead as to spoil a splendid joke by telling him.”

“But I didn’t think about that,” Dolly protested, her eyes welling with tears. “I just heard him say he was surprised to learn she couldn’t swim and I remembered that she can. The words came out just as I thought them. You aren’t angry with me, Aunt Emily, are you?”

“No, Dolly,” Emily replied quietly. “Indeed, if I had chanced to recall telling you, I would never have tried to trick your cousin, for if you had kept silent and he had later learned of your knowledge, he would have been angry with you too. I do try very hard never to involve others in my bumblebroths. Now, if you will all excuse me, I do need to take off these wet clothes. Sabrina, don’t trouble your head over any of this. At the moment, the last thing I wish to do is to apologize to that odious wretch, but I daresay that by tomorrow I shall feel differently. I cannot and will not allow him to replace my dress, however. It would be most improper. Hello, Miss Lavinia,” she added, encountering that lady at the top of the stairs. “I am sorry to have spoilt your dinner.”

“Didn’t spoil it,” declared Miss Lavinia, looking her over from top to toe. “Stayed and ate my meal like a Christian. Food’s cold now, though. Did you enjoy your swim?”

“Not in the least,” said Emily wryly, “but the honors did not all go to the opposition, ma’am.”

“Glad to hear it. Best you get dry, my dear.”

“I’ll go along and help,” Dolly said, paying no heed to her mama’s suggestion that she ought to finish her dinner, but any gratitude Emily might have felt for her niece’s concern vanished when she realized that Dolly wanted only to enlist her help in convincing the earl that his attitude with regard to her own wishes was gothic. Since Emily was wholly in accord with Meriden’s opinions regarding the proper activities for young ladies in mourning, she was unable to acquit herself well in the conversation that followed. Indeed, she rather feared, once Dolly had gone, that she had let her niece see that she found her complaints tedious.

While Martha helped her finish changing, Emily considered the events of the evening. That Meriden had been entirely accurate in his assessment of both Oliver and Dolly she could no longer doubt. The evidence of her own eyes and ears were plain. Still, the realization, though it gave her pause, did not change her opinion of his methods of dealing with the two young people. Meriden, she decided, needed to learn to be more patient with both of them, more tolerant of their faults. Emily herself had learned a great deal already. She had certainly learned that she would gain little in head-on conflict with the earl. Meriden was clearly more assertive than she, more bellicose, and even less afraid to behave outrageously.

The last thought brought a flush to her cheeks, for she remembered having once thrown a book at her brother Ned after just such extreme provocation as that offered by Meriden tonight. That time, however, though Ned might have been tempted to retaliate, her father had sent them both to their respective bedchambers with orders to contemplate their lack of conduct. Certainly no one had tossed her into the river for the mere venting of a little temper. And although there had been yet another lecture from Papa the following morning, ending with the oft-repeated suggestion that she learn to control her explosive rages, Emily had known his heart wasn’t in it. No one knew better than her family how hard she tried to behave in a civil manner, and no one knew better than they that the harder she struggled to contain her temper, the greater the explosion when she lost it.