Emma (21 page)

The moment had come, it appeared. She’d long waited for an introduction to the topic that had been so dear to her purpose, and here it rose up in glory like the morning sun, announcing the arrival of a perfect moment. Yet she feared his censure as surely as she knew he’d give it. Still, she was not done with the present conversation. It fell on her shoulders with far more security than suggesting to Mr Knightley that he instruct her in the ways of lovers. His question hung in the air patiently awaiting the answer.

Emma folded her hands and followed the path around a bend. She prayed he could not detect the fine tremble that gave away her nerves on the subject. “My sense of right is not questionable, Mr Knightley, merely different from yours. Just as I am equally firm in my assertion that you could not know what it is to give over your independence to someone else in respect for the people who share your home. I give over mine to my father, but who do you answer to? You have no one and therefore cannot suppose to know what Frank Churchill can or cannot say to Mr and Mrs Churchill. In this you must concede to his exceeding good sense in maintaining his position with them above his own desire to visit Highbury.”

“Then it would not be so strong a sense. If it failed to produce equal exertion, it could not be an equal conviction.” Mr Knightley followed her.

“Oh, the difference of situation and habit! I wish you would try to understand what an amiable young man may be likely to feel in directly opposing those, whom as child and boy he has been looking up to all his life.”

“Our amiable young man is a very weak young man, if this be the first occasion of his carrying through a resolution to do right against the will of others. It ought to have been a habit with him by this time, of following his duty, instead of consulting expediency. I can allow for the fears of the child, but not of the man. As he became rational, he ought to have roused himself and shaken off all that was unworthy in their authority. He ought to have opposed the first attempt on their side to make him slight his father. Had he begun as he ought, there would have been no difficulty now.”

“We shall never agree about him,” cried Emma, “but that is nothing extraordinary. I have not the least idea of his being a weak young man. I feel sure that he is not. Mr Weston would not be blind to folly, though in his own son, but he is very likely to have a more yielding, complying, mild disposition than would suit your notions of man’s perfection. I dare say he has, and though it may cut him off from some advantages, it will secure him many others.”

“Yes, all the advantages of sitting still when he ought to move, and of leading a life of mere idle pleasure, and fancying himself extremely expert in finding excuses for it. He can sit down and write a fine flourishing letter, full of professions and falsehoods, and persuade himself that he has hit upon the very best method in the world of preserving peace at home and preventing his father’s having any right to complain. His letters disgust me.”

“Your feelings are singular. They seem to satisfy everybody else.”

“I suspect they do not satisfy Mrs Weston. They hardly can satisfy a woman of her good sense and quick feelings, standing in a mother’s place, but without a mother’s affection to blind her. It is on her account that attention to Randalls is doubly due, and she must doubly feel the omission. Had she been a person of consequence herself, he would have come, I dare say, and it would not have signified whether he did or no. Can you think your friend behind-hand in these sort of considerations? Do you suppose she does not often say all this to herself? No, Emma, your amiable young man can be amiable only in French, not in English. He may be very ‘amiable’, have very good manners and be very agreeable, but he can have no English delicacy towards the feelings of other people, nothing really amiable about him.”

“You seem determined to think ill of him.” She made her observation to the trees planted along the back glassed wall of windows. It allowed her to hide her smirk from Mr Knightley and she quite liked the effect his anger had on him, colouring his cheeks and lighting his eyes. Even more pleased was she that the rear of the greenhouse remained out of view from Hartfield proper, where prying eyes could make the rest of her intended discussion more difficult, and so it was here that she stopped walking on.

“Me! Not at all,” replied Mr Knightley, rather displeased. “I do not want to think ill of him. I should be as ready to acknowledge his merits as any other man, but I hear of none, except what are merely personal, that he is well-grown and good-looking, with smooth, plausible manners.”

Ah! Jealousy then, and what better fun to have than at the expense of Mr Knightley’s good humour on the subject? “Well, if he have nothing else to recommend him, he will be a treasure at Highbury. We do not often look upon fine young men, well-bred and agreeable. We must not be nice and ask for all the virtues into the bargain. Cannot you imagine, Mr Knightley, what a
sensation
his coming will produce? There will be but one subject throughout the parishes of Donwell and Highbury, but one interest—one object of curiosity. It will be all Mr Frank Churchill, we shall think and speak of nobody else.”

“You will excuse my being so much overpowered. If I find him conversable, I shall be glad of his acquaintance, but if he is only a chattering coxcomb, he will not occupy much of my time or thoughts.” Mr Knightley’s lips twisted into a perverse frown, seemingly ill-pleased with Emma’s grand assessment of the man in question.

“My idea of him is that he can adapt his conversation to the taste of everybody, and has the power as well as the wish of being universally agreeable. To you, he will talk of farming, to me, of drawing or music, and so on to everybody, having that general information on all subjects which will enable him to follow the lead, or take the lead, just as propriety may require, and to speak extremely well on each. That is my idea of him.”

“And mine,” said Mr Knightley warmly, “is that if he turn out anything like it, he will be the most insufferable fellow breathing! What! At three-and-twenty to be the king of his company—the great man—the practised politician, who is to read everybody’s character, and make everybody’s talents conduce to the display of his own superiority, to be dispensing his flatteries around, that he may make all appear like fools compared with himself! My dear Emma, your own good sense could not endure such a puppy when it came to the point.”

“I will say no more about him,” cried Emma, “you turn everything to evil. We are both prejudiced, you against, I for him, and we have no chance of agreeing till he is really here.”

“Prejudiced! I am not prejudiced.”

“But I am very much, and without being at all ashamed of it. My love for Mr and Mrs Weston gives me a decided prejudice in his favour.”

“He is a person I never think of from one month’s end to another,” said Mr Knightley, with a degree of vexation, which made Emma wish to immediately talk of something else, though she could not comprehend why he should be angry.

To take a dislike to a young man, only because he appeared to be of a different disposition from himself, was unworthy of the real liberality of mind which she was always used to acknowledge in him, for with all the high opinion of himself which she had often laid to his charge, she had never before for a moment supposed it could make him unjust to the merit of another.

“Come, let’s talk of it no more, for I see no ‘amiable’ end to this discussion,” Mr Knightley finished tersely.

“Just as well, as I have another subject to discuss with you which I hope will fall more pleasantly on your ears than the news of Frank Churchill and his delayed visit.”

“Tell it, then. I am obliged to hear anything that diverts us from such an intolerable matter.”

“You mentioned it already, though rather uncouthly, when you referred to our previous discussion. My sense of right being called into question, if I remember.”

Mr Knightley’s brow rose. “Oh? You wish to speak of it now but not earlier? What has changed?”

“Not a thing. I have given considerable thought to our discussion and your—instruction—against my pursuit of curiosity, but I cannot disregard my original view on the matter.”

“What might that view be?”

“But you know it already!” Emma exclaimed in frustration. “I think you mean for me to say it aloud so you can bring your smirks and patronising words to play again. If that is your intent, pray remain quiet a moment while I tell it. I have no fear of renewing the business nor of your methods of instruction. Quite the contrary. I depend upon your instruction in every matter—to the most finite of conclusions,” she hinted.

Mr Knightley’s eyes grew narrow. “Do you mean to say that you wish for more instruction in the same vein as was given previously? I had thought you finished with such thoughts after discovering how poorly conceived they were. Am I now to believe you never left off, only strengthened your resolve to continue?”

“Exactly so, sir.”

“Is it this reason you so desired the visit with Frank Churchill to continue as planned? You wished a private seduction of the child?”

Emma sighed her displeasure. “He’s no more a child than I am.”

“To your lack of maturity, you have just attested. Only a child would throw good sense after bad and risk all that she has in good standing, for degradation among society.”

“It is for that reason precisely that I have
not
chosen Frank Churchill for the business, but you.”

“Me?”

The expression he bore would have been comical had not the direction of his horror been directed upon her and her request of him. Was she so undesirable a project? Emma winced. “You seemed unopposed several weeks past. Has much changed in the interim? Am I horribly disfigured in your eyes such that you will not entertain the idea?”

“Disfigured?” Mr Knightley asked, seeming shocked.

Slowly his features rearranged into one more similar to the one she’d only seen the moments before he’d kissed her. It set her pulse to galloping. Where she had not questioned her sanity prior, she did so now. He did not appear as her usual Mr Knightley, controlled, calm or brotherly, but rather as some feral creature loosed in a coop of tasty fowl.

Mr Knightley stalked her until Emma was forced to retreat. Three steps and three alone she had until her shoulder pressed the trunk of an exotic tree. Mr Knightley did not pause until she had been well and truly caged between him and the unyielding, narrow plant. Her slippers pushed unpleasantly into the loose soil and she had a parting thought to the dirt the hem of her dress would collect.

“Hardly disfigured, Emma. Rather the contrary. I would expect any man who received such an invitation would welcome his opportunity to see your task done with haste. Good that you came to me and not some other fool who would use you badly and leave you ruined.”

His praise at odds with the fear he struck in her became the direction she clung to. “I am glad you see as I do. Trust is everything in these matters. I cannot continue until I know I have it.”

“
I
cannot continue until I know precisely what you’d have me do. Do not feign shyness now, Emma, you have travelled well beyond the limits of polite society and tread pretty feet into territory you had best be sure you wish to enter.”

Emma wetted her lips, both alarmed and intrigued when Mr Knightley made no pretence of following the motion with his gaze. Her heart sped, yet she knew he had every right to hear the full request and either accept or decline as he chose.

“The full score of lovemaking between a man and a woman,” she announced with more determination than she felt.

“All of it, Emma?” he asked, his tone low and careful. “Do you know what you ask for?”

She had only what she imagined, what had happened already and the hushed secrets shared by Mrs Weston. More kissing, for certain. The small portions of information she had been able to free from Mrs Weston on the subject were encased with blushes and assertions that the deed—whatever full deed that might be—would be enjoyable to no small measure.

“I do.”

“Kissing?” he asked, placing a soft press of his lips to the corner of hers.

“Yes.” She smiled cheerfully, glad he understood her meaning without having to display how very little she actually knew of lovemaking.

“Nibbling?” he asked, brushing his lips across her cheek to capture her earlobe in his mouth.

Warm and moist he suckled on it, teasing the decorative bob that hung there with his tongue. The graze of his teeth caused her to exclaim in surprise. Her middle fluttered much the way she remembered soaring too high in a tree swing before swooping down.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Definitely more of that. I quite like it.”

He released the morsel. “And what of other things, Emma?”

As she had not specific actions to tie to the question, she could only nod.

Mr Knightley’s gaze held hers. With a sudden flare of heat to her cheeks, she felt his hand at her waist before he slid it up her side. He paused, lifted a superior brow and with another smirk, cupped her breast.

“Oh!”

“More, Emma?” he asked.

Holding his gaze proved to be far more difficult a task than she had expected, but hold it she did. His hot palm on her stirred other sensations she had little experience with. Her body quickened oddly, leaving her tingling in unusual places—between her legs mostly, but her breast ached and her nipple pushed against the unfamiliar weight.

Though his challenge could be read clearly in his eyes, Emma liked what he did and it left her more determined that her decision had been wise.

“More,” she agreed, lifting her chin.

A measure of curious respect entered his eyes. His glance darted across her face as though to ascertain if she had doubts, then seeming to find none, he smiled.

“I must say that this comes as quite a surprise. I expected you to revise your plan and you have not.”

“Will you keep my secrets?” she asked plainly.

“I will,” he agreed solemnly. “I have often admired your figure, but had never expected to be presented with such a tempting prize. You are certain, Emma? Once committed to the end, it cannot be undone.”