Cheryl Holt (40 page)

Sympathetically, John nodded, then he addressed her mother once more.

“Yes, Mrs. Fitzgerald,” he kindly fabricated. “Edward sent me to fetch you. He’s waiting for you at the house.”

“Marvelous.”

She rose, and John steadied her as Jane retrieved their coats and bonnets, then he escorted them out into the brisk breeze, and he gripped her mother’s arm, guiding her so that she didn’t stumble or lose her balance.

At the rear of the line of wagons, a fashionable gig was parked, a driver at the ready, and John lifted her mother in, then started to aid Jane with the high step. At the last second, she whirled and hugged him around the waist, burying her nose in the scratchy wool of his coat.

“I knew you’d come for us!” she blurted out. “I just knew it! I’ve been praying every night! I’m so glad you’re here!”

“So am I.” He hugged her in return and kissed the top of her head. “I’m going to take care of everything, Jane. Don’t you fret.”

“I shan’t,” she vowed.

He hoisted her up and settled her, tucking a blanket around her legs, then he gave directions to their driver. The man snapped the reins, and they were off at a pace so rapid that her stomach tickled, and she laughed gaily and clutched the strap. Before they rounded the curve in the lane, she shifted on the seat and peeked over her shoulder for a final glimpse of the cottage where she’d lived in dread every single day they’d occupied it.

The group of men were conferring with John. They’d brought axes and hammers, and he gestured toward the dreary, dilapidated shack.

“Let’s get on with it,” he commanded. “We’re in a hurry.”

A slow smile spread across her face, and she turned toward the front, refusing to look back.

Emma trudged down the rutted road toward her cottage, forcing herself to keep on. The autumn wind was frigid, and her worn cloak hardly shielded her from the elements. Her toes and fingers tingled from the cold.

She gazed up at the dazzling blue sky, at the angry clouds flitting past. The ground was littered with orange and yellow leaves, the tree branches stripped bare. There was smoke in the air, the smells of the season vividly evident, as the harvest wound to a close and neighbors incinerated their rubbish.

Winter would be upon them soon.

Then what?
an inner voice prompted, but she declined to mull the possible, calamitous answers.

The birth she’d attended had been relatively smooth, the laboring quick, and the pain minor. As she’d prepared to depart, the father of the babe had slipped a loaf of bread and some potatoes into her bag, so at least they’d have supper to show for her efforts, but with the dastardly choices she had to make shortly, the notion of a hot meal was scant solace.

How she detested going home! She’d have to endure her mother’s vacuous ramblings and faltering health, and Jane’s probing interrogations. Jane goaded her incessantly, wanting to know why she would bind herself to Harold. The poor girl was such an optimist! Emma couldn’t explain the hideous sins adults were wont to commit, or the depth of her despair.

What was she to do?

The obvious solution was to contact John Clayton again, which she’d never do. She’d debased herself once, but hadn’t received a reply to her pitiful letter.

If he’d responded, if he’d had the estate agent drop by the cottage, if he’d indicated the slightest persisting interest, she wouldn’t be where she was: fearful, lost, distressed, bewildered.

When she recollected their last conversation, where he begged her to get in touch with him if there was a babe, she saw red. How sincere he’d been! How earnest! What a talented actor!

He’d driven her to desperate measures, had left her without options. She’d vainly tried to solve her dilemma, but all was in ruins. She couldn’t marry Harold! Yet, if she spurned him, what would become of them?

Harold had ambushed her by deviously circulating rumors that there was to be a swift wedding. Then the loathsome swine had called the banns during Sunday
services! When she traveled through the village, acquaintances slyly palavered as to the need for a hasty ceremony.

No one had been impertinent enough to quiz her as to why they were in such a rush, so she hadn’t had the opportunity to deny any gossip, and she wasn’t about to raise the topic herself.

Speculation was rampant, and she was trapped, boxed into a corner. If she didn’t wed him, the next prattle would be that Harold had gallantly endeavored to rescue her from scandal, but she’d been too pigheaded to accept. Harold would be painted the hero, and she would be transformed into the village Jezebel.

After perceiving his dangerous personality, which he scrupulously hid from the congregation, she had no doubt that he would act on his threats of exposure. While she’d never beheld a public accusation of fornication, she’d heard about the appalling spectacles.

They hadn’t journeyed far from the era when women were burned at the stake for lesser offenses, and she couldn’t bear to contemplate what fate the male villagers might inflict. Or the female ones. They could be the most vicious.

She literally did not think she could survive the humiliation of being dragged to the church, where her father had done so much good and had been so revered. Harold would hurl malicious, inflammatory comments, describing her liaison with John Clayton. She’d have to kneel, muzzled and fettered, to grovel as Harold repeated her transgressions.

The odds were great that she’d be whipped, maybe stoned, or that she would sustain similar physical abuse. With severe punishment, the precious babe inside her might be injured.

If she was killed, or badly hurt, what would happen
to Jane and her mother? Since they would be relatives of an outcast, no one would be sufficiently brave to see to their welfare.

She plodded on, so wrapped up in tabulating her woes that she wasn’t aware of the approaching horse until it was upon her. The animal snorted and pawed at the dirt as the rider reined him in. Too mired in her misery to worry over who was blocking her path, she didn’t glance up.

“Hello, Emma,” a male said from atop the horse.

Stunned, she halted in her tracks, studying the ground. That seductive baritone could only belong to one man!

She would not peek up at him! She absolutely would not!

As if he were invisible, she skirted him and strode on, glaring down the road, but she could feel his eyes—intent, engrossed, lingering—upon her back. After a dozen steps, he circled the horse and trotted after her.

“Would you like a ride?” he asked.

Warily, she glowered at the large, lumbering creature upon which he was so graciously seated.

Wouldn’t she just love a ride? Wouldn’t it be fabulous—for a few minutes—to have someone else carrying the load?

Through clenched teeth, she hissed, “Go away!”

She was so furious with him! He’d caused her so much melancholy, so much anguish and tribulation, that she yearned to curl her fingers around his pretty neck and squeeze until he couldn’t draw another breath.

If there was a small part of her—a minuscule, tiny, infinitesimal part—that had suffered an absurd, agonizing wave of joy that he’d finally come for her, she paid it no heed. He was too much of a scoundrel to have
surfaced when she needed him most. This had to be a chance encounter. An accident. A fluke.

Very probably, he’d been at the manor for a few hours and was already bored. He likely wanted to reduce his tedium by enticing her into a tumble in the grass.

If she’d been holding a pistol, she’d have shot him through the middle of his black heart!

She continued on.

He tagged along, not seeming to mind that she was ignoring him. Eventually, he dismounted, nonchalantly strolling beside her as though he hadn’t a care in the world. Which he hadn’t.

“You look tired,” he asserted.

“Yes,
Viscount
Wakefield. I’m tired. That’s generally how one feels when one has been toiling away like a dog.”

“Why don’t you ride, and I’ll walk?” He was disarmingly courteous. “I’ll help you up.”

“I’m not climbing on that beast.”

She stomped off, and he raced to catch up.

“Why don’t you like horses?”

“I like horses well enough.”

“Did you never learn to ride?”

“Of course I learned!” She was indignant at the insult; every girl of gentle breeding knew how. “We weren’t always paupers!”

“Then why won’t you get on? You could use the rest.”

Incensed, she whirled around, hands on hips, her body tense with pressure. The rat was smiling at her! Smiling! “I fell once, all right? When I was twelve, I broke my arm.”

“And you never tried again?”

“No, I didn’t, Your Eminent Lordship. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

She hustled off, unable to be so close to him. He was so handsome, so striking. In the intervening period when he’d been away, she’d forgotten, and to see him now—too beautiful, too magnificent, too illustrious, too . . . too . . . everything!—was more than she could tolerate.

As he came up behind her, her pique soared.

“Emma, you seem to be angry with me.”

“Angry? With you?” She was so enraged that she could have bit nails in half! She scoffed. “I’d have to care about you to be angry.”

He laughed. Laughed at her fury! Suddenly, she fathomed how the most placid of people could occasionally be motivated to murder. At the moment, a messy, heinous homicide seemed like a capital idea.

“I’ve missed you,” he said out of the blue.

She steeled herself, refusing to be moved by the declaration.

“If you’re here because you’re hoping we’ll have a roll in the hay for old time’s sake, you can think again!” Abruptly, she stopped, and he did, too. The horse, not expecting the cessation, bumped into him. “I’m to be married on Sunday,” she seethed, “so you can hie yourself off to London, to your whores, and your mistresses, and your fiancées who aren’t really engaged to you. Do
not
darken my doorstep in the future. Farewell, Lord Wakefield!”

The cottage was round the bend, and she sped toward it, yearning to be sequestered inside where she could cry and lick her wounds in private.

“Emma!” he called after her.

She staggered around, her arms flailing at her sides, and she imagined that she appeared to be a madwoman, dawdling in the forest and railing at the top of her lungs. “What will it take to make you go away?” she yelled.
“Please tell me what it is so that I can effect it immediately! You’re not wanted here!”

He shrugged and chuckled. “Sorry, but I’m not leaving.”

What did he mean? Not just then? Not for a few days? Not ever?

She was too distraught to decipher riddles!

“I’m needed at home,” she falteringly muttered, marching away, frantic for him to desist and depart, to halt the slow, unremitting torture she experienced merely by being in his presence.

“Actually,” he gingerly remarked, “I wanted to talk to you about the cottage before you arrived. That’s why I rode out to greet you.”

His words were an ominous, echoing warning, and she cast about as it occurred to her that the smoke she’d been smelling for some distance had grown much stronger, and the pungent odor of burning wood filled her with dread.

Frenzied, ferocious, she whipped toward him, scrutinizing him, searching for a clue as to this latest machination, but he was an expert at masking his schemes and emotions. She could read nothing in his countenance.

“What have you done now?”

“It was for your own good,” he loftily claimed.

Despite her enervation, she ran as fast as she could to the end of the lane. Her heart about to burst from her chest, she stormed into the clearing where her house had once been located, but it had vanished. All that remained were the remnants of the rock chimney and a smoldering pile of charred logs. Most of it had dwindled to ash, but a few flames still flickered. She narrowed her focus, homing in on a sledgehammer someone had left leaning against a tree.

The fire hadn’t been random. He’d waited until she was away, then he’d deliberately torched the place.

As though naught were amiss, he neared, his expensive boots crunching through the fallen leaves, his impressive horse prancing behind.

“Where is Jane?” she shouted. “Where is my mother?”

“I have them.”

“You
have
them?”

“Yes.”

“Where are our belongings? Did you destroy them, too?”

“No. I’ve confiscated all you own.”

The imperious tyrant! “But why? We have hardly anything. What can you want with it?”

“Well, Miss Fitzgerald, you do owe me quite a lot of rent.”

The rent? He had the gall to mention the rent? “But you canceled the rent! For everyone!”

“Not for you. You demanded that I not, remember? You didn’t want any special treatment.”

Was he jesting? Mocking her? She scowled at him, but his gaze was inscrutable. “So you’ll auction off our pathetic collection of possessions to make up for it?”

“Unless you can conceive of some other way to remunerate me for my troubles.”

“What
troubles
have we created for you?” she huffed. “I wouldn’t have permitted a . . . a . . .
dog
to live in that cottage, let alone a family of destitute women. What burden has been levied upon you by our being here?”

“I’m a businessman, Emma,” he said irritatingly. “I’d be willing to forego the income if
you
could make it worth my while—so to speak. What could you do that might tickle my fancy?”

They’d had this conversation once before. The day they’d met. How dare he solicit her favors! After all the havoc he’d wrought! After all he’d put her through! From how he was regarding her—as though he were the cat and she the canary—he obviously believed she’d yield in a thrice.

The presumption! The effrontery! She was so irate that she thought she might explode.

“You have the audacity to suppose”—she stalked over to him, ready to kill—“that I would succumb to such a nefarious proposition a second time?”

“Yes.” Arrogantly, he clasped his hands behind his back and casually rocked on the balls of his feet. “I have everything you hold dear, everything you cherish. How else will you regain it?”