Rake's Guide to Pleasure. (20 page)

His lips quirked into a half smile. "There is passion between us. Irrational passion. If we'd only acknowledge it, I daresay we wouldn't argue half as much."

"If we didn't see each other, we wouldn't argue at all."

His smile didn't budge. "Speaking of arguments, you start one every time I ask you about your stubborn position. Had you noticed that? And I would truly like to know what ridiculous idea you have stuck in your head. You say you will not take a lover, but it's clearly nothing to do with morals. Or your reputation. Both are tattered or at least worn to a sheen."

"How dare—"

"And you've said several times that you won't marry, so it's nothing to do with some future, honorable gentleman. And you want this, want it enough to do wicked things with me in public places. Perhaps I am dim-witted—no, don't say anything—but I cannot fathom your reasoning."

Emma refused to answer. She strolled toward the small front window and stared blindly out.

"I'll have an answer," Hart insisted. "And I don't think it's arrogance to say you cannot resist me forever. You want this. You want me. And I won't go away until you tell me."

No, she could not resist forever. She was hardly resisting at all anymore, vaguely hoping that he would overwhelm her and she would mindlessly give in. Emma pressed her hand to the cold glass. Perhaps she should tell him that she had the pox. That would cool his blood. But, no, her cheeks were reddening at the mere thought. She wasn't quite that desperate yet, though she might be in the future.

Then the perfect answer occurred to her. Unconventional as he was, he was still the young man who'd come to her rescue as a child. The man who'd raised his younger sister. Despite his cold veneer, he wouldn't find a heartless, selfish woman attractive.

"My mother was ruined by childbirth," she whispered. The words fogged the glass.

"What?"

Emma whirled toward him and made her mouth smirk. "My mother. She ruined herself having children for my father. Only two, mind you, but both were a tragedy. The first one ruined her looks, as my father pointed out often enough. She grew fat, you see. But it was the second that did her in. It took her almost a year to die, and I wished every day that she had died during the birth. She was made useless and ugly and sick. A foul embarrassment to the family. So I do not wish to risk having children, Your Grace, and therefore I will not engage in intercourse with you or anyone else."

His face was wiped blank with shock. "There are ways to—but you were married."

Emma lunged in with the final blow. "Well, I did my best, you understand, between prayer and resistance. I was determined not to become a fat matron saddled with a passel of sniveling brats." She smiled brightly. As she watched, his eyes grew incrementally more distant.

"You are young. You—"

"Yes, I am. And I mean to make the most of it."

"By living as a nun?"

"As you've pointed out, I'm hardly living as a nun." His body grew stiffer and straighter as each second passed. "There are many ways to prevent conception."

"None of them reliable enough for me. It is not that I want to wait to have children,
Somerhart
. I do not ever want them. Apparently you are willing to take the occasional risk. I am not."

"I would support—"

"Oh, and would you carry the child for me as well? Grow fat and bloated? Would you go through the blood and pain and gore of childbirth? Turn your chest into a pair of swollen cow's teats? Become a slave to every clinging need of an idiot child?" She forced a little shudder. "No, thank you."

"I see," he said simply. He studied her again, as he had so many times before. Studied her and found her wanting if the downward curve of his mouth was any indication. He gave her a slow nod. "Well, thank you for the explanation. You must be tired after your disturbing morning. I'll honor my promise and leave you to rest."

"Thank you, Your Grace."

His carriage had not returned, but she did not inquire how he would travel. She couldn't speak. The door opened and closed in a rush of freezing air, cooling the tears that only now pooled in her eyes.

She'd spoken the truth—almost—and the pain of that truth held her rooted to the spot. She stood there, dumb and silent and staring at a small rip in the wallpaper against the far wall.

No, she did not want children. She could not bear the thought of it. Not because her mother had grown fat; Emma suspected she'd done that purposefully to avoid her husband's desires. It wasn't even her mother's slow descent into death after Will's birth.

Emma did not want a husband, and so it had always been easy to dismiss the thought of children. But when she'd spoken the words aloud, the truth of it had stabbed through her heart. She had already had a child. Will. She had loved him and raised him. Seen to his needs. She'd comforted him after his nightmares, and held his little body when he'd hurt. She'd taken him everywhere with her, even taught him to read when his nanny had been occupied in the baron's bedroom. And then he'd died.

One moment he'd been her whole world, and the next he'd been lowered into a dank, muddy hole and covered up with dirt. The world had moved on, and she'd been left standing there, staring at turned earth.

She had loved one child, and that had been enough pain to last two lifetimes.

Emma made her feet move back to the stairway. She trudged slowly up to the second floor, shuffled into her bedroom and climbed beneath the cold sheets. She was too tired to prepare dinner, and she knew that Bess was just as heartsick as she.

The sky outside slowly darkened, and Emma closed her swollen eyes.

"She is gone. You will have to forget her."

Matthew glared at his father. "How can you say that?"

His father threw up his hands with a grimace. "How can I say it? She is gone, Matthew. Now I agreed she was a fine match when she was here, but the girl is clearly determined not to marry. She turned down your every offer, and then she ran off. Use your head for something more than prayer."

Matthew shot to his feet and slammed his hands down on the table.
"How dare you.
I am obligated to honor you as my father, but I will not tolerate you mocking the church."

"Our church is the Church of England, and that vicar is nothing but a Romanist."

"Reverend Whittier is a great man! He and others like him are determined to bring the church back to God. He is helping the church find its soul, just as he is helping me find mine."

His father ran a hand through his thin white hair. "Your soul is right here and there is nothing wrong with it. And there is nothing wrong with the church. Those men you speak of will soon be driven out of it like the vermin they are. And if you continue your plan to join their ranks, you will be driven away too."

"You know nothing about it," Matthew spat.

"The church has made its position clear about your Romanists and their papist rituals."

"I will not listen to this. As soon as I'm married, Father Whittier will sponsor my admission to the clergy. I will heal people's souls. I will help lead the church back to its spirit. But I cannot do that if my own soul is shadowed with sin and wanton lust."

His father only shook his head. It was a conversation they'd had many times. Matthew stared at the old man's cottony puffs of hair and his pink skin. He was weak; he'd always been too kind, too forgiving. Always given into his wife's stronger personality. Matthew said a quick prayer of thanks that he'd inherited his mother's spine.

"You promised that I could marry her. Promised you would help."

"I thought she wanted the same. She—"

"She made her choice when she led me astray. She toyed with my heart and sullied my soul and now she will reap her harvest. I will marry her, Father. I must."

The old man's head dropped into his hands. "You have no idea where she is. You've done nothing for the past months but travel half the country looking for her. I refuse to support you any longer. I cannot afford it."

Frustration urged him to rail and fume, but Matthew managed to hold onto logic. When the time came, his father would do as he asked; he was sure of it. So he tempered his voice when he spoke. "I understand, Father, but I am praying for an answer every day. If God brings me information about her, will you offer me one last chance?"

His father said nothing for a long time. His shoulders dropped.

"I love her," Matthew whispered.

Finally, his father nodded. "If you find her, I will send you to see her, but I will do nothing to force her back. You understand?"

Satisfaction burned through him. Yes, he understood, but it didn't matter. He would need no help forcing her back. Matthew smiled down at his father's bowed head. "Of course. Thank you, Father." And he headed back to the church to pray harder.

Chapter
ll

The sun was warm against her back, nearly as warm as the heat of Lancaster's arm beneath her hand. She smiled toward the bright, shifting light of the Thames and slowed her pace a little. Their walk was coming to an end and she didn't quite want it to stop. Lancaster was charming and handsome. A friend, it seemed, since he wasn't a suitor. And the day felt like spring.

She felt a prickling of alarm at the idea and pushed it away. She had a month, nearly, before the crowds began their return to London, and her assets grew daily. A few members of Parliament had begun to trickle back to town, but they left their families in the country until March. The men wanted entertainment, and gambling was the order of the day. Whoring too, she supposed, but the gambling was all that interested her.

And for the moment, winter was gone, and all the dark thoughts that came along with it. The day reminded her of afternoons in her uncle's kitchen garden, or mornings collecting warm eggs from the henhouse, the smooth, perfect curve of heat in her palm.

A gull flew past, only feet away, and Emma thought of her mother exclaiming with delight at the sight of every seal or pelican as they'd walked along the seashore.

"What are you thinking of, Lady
Denmore
?"

Emma smiled up at her companion. "I was thinking of being a child, walking with my mother along the beach."

"Ah. I have never been to Brighton."

"Neither have I, actually! We preferred Scarborough. She did not go to be seen, you understand. She wanted peace." Peace. Just what Emma wanted for herself.

"Well, you certainly looked peaceful thinking about it."

"It is my favorite place in the world," she said, before she thought better of it. When she disappeared, she needed to disappear completely. She saw that Lancaster was about to speak and rushed to change the subject. "I was shocked that there would be yachting so early in the year. The water must be frigid."

"As long as there's no ice, it is always the right time for a race, I gather. There are people to place bets"—he shot her a sardonic look—"and so there are people willing to race."

"Some men are easily persuaded."

"Ha! When you are doing the persuading, I'm sure that is true of all of us."

Emma tapped his arm and laughed, but his words reminded her of
Somerhart
and how she'd finally persuaded him away. Three weeks had passed without a word. Oh, she spied him at a few parties, but he'd spared her nothing more than a nod and a look. He hadn't made his way to her, and she hadn't dared approach him after she'd finally gotten him to keep his distance. It had been necessary. Painful, but necessary.

Lancaster interrupted her thoughts. "Lord
Osbourne
tells me that your luck has only improved in the past month. He is quite proud of your skills."

Emma laughed past her twinge of guilt. The
Osbournes
had welcomed her as if she were a long-lost niece. They had been quite close to her uncle in their youth, and they delighted in hearing stories of him and his garden battles, but they were even happier to pass on tales of their collective youth. They'd be hurt by her elaborate deception, perhaps humiliated.

"Lord
Osbourne
," she said sincerely, "is the soul of kindness."

"He also mentioned that
Somerhart
has been conspicuously absent from most gatherings you attend."