Chapter 3

It was surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly? Emily couldn't even tell anymore; this was the effect the twins had on people's minds) difficult to secretly remove a frog from a ballroom without letting anyone know what she was doing or compromising her own reputation.

By the time she'd managed the thing, Amanda and Rose had disappeared.

Again.

Mentally swearing (and lamenting that her dictionary of mental swears was sorely lacking), Emily searched through the crowds for her sisters—again—though this time she did manage to watch where she was going.

What she did not manage, however, was to find both sisters; when she located Rose, Amanda was nowhere in sight.

"Where is Amanda?" she asked as she approached her sister, the question somewhere between a demand and a lament.

Rose gave her a stubborn look.

That was never good.

While Amanda was, generally speaking, the twin far more likely to overflow with the kind of brilliant ideas that gave Emily a blistering headache, she could also often be distracted by a different idea—a more appropriate one if Emily had anything to do with it—so long as it amused her. Rose, in contrast, was typically more likely to default to appropriate behavior unless Amanda was there to tempt her into chaos, but she was far more intractable when she put her mind to it.

"You are being far too controlling, Emily," Rose accused, chin jutting out mulishly. "I simply don't know why you feel you must act this way."

And perhaps whatever devil possessed Rose when she got in this mood affected Emily as well, for though she knew every move to this argument as well as she knew her own name, she found herself engaging in it anyway.

"Because I'm your sister," she said as she had a hundred times before. "I am trying to protect you."

"Protect us?" Rose asked, rolling her eyes and tossing her head like she had a thousand times before. "From what? From enjoying ourselves? From having our own personalities?"

"No," said Emily through gritted teeth. "From people who would try to take advantage. You know the world is not safe for young ladies?—"

"I don't know that," Rose retorted. "How could I know that when you're constantly trying to keep us from ever experiencing anything?"

"That's not what I'm trying to do." It was highly inappropriate to quibble like children in a ballroom, but they both had the sense at least to keep their argument to heated whispers. Even so, the part of Emily that was always worrying about decorum—both for her own sake and for the twins'—fretted that glances had started to drift their way.

"You're not our mother!" Rose hissed, and they both froze.

There it was. The place this argument always ended up, the hurdle it could never overcome.

Emily felt all the ire drop out of her, replaced by a heavy mantle of sadness.

"I know I'm not," she said softly even as Rose tripped over herself to apologize.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Em; I'm being horrid," she replied, lunging for Emily's hand.

Emily squeezed her sister's fingers. "You're not—well, you are," she amended, and Rose chuckled, the tension between them dissipating in a flash. "But I understand it. I shall try to be more…understanding."

Even as she said it, though, she couldn't stop her nose from wrinkling.

"I do not believe you," Rose said, but there was no heat to her tone. "I have no doubt that you will continue to be your terrible, overprotective self."

Emily had no suitable response to this—as she probably would continue to be protective though she refused to acknowledge Rose's other descriptors—so she merely offered her little sister her arm. Rose looped her elbow through Emily's.

"Will you please tell me where Amanda is, though?" she prompted after a moment.

"Incorrigible," Rose chuckled. "Yes, very well—she's dancing? Really, Emily, what did you expect?"

Emily assumed that question was rhetorical as, with Amanda, no expectation was too outlandish.

She could not resist, however, muttering to her sister, "You might've said that from the start, you know."

Rose's mouth quirked with devilish amusement.

A couple standing across the room caught Emily's eye.

"My goodness!" she exclaimed. "What on earth is Diana doing here?"

She and Rose began to cross to the woman in question, who beamed and waved excitedly as soon as she saw them coming, leaning heavily on her husband's arm when the move upset her balance.

Diana Young, the Duchess of Hawkins, was in the advanced stage of pregnancy when a woman's shape defied conventional physics. Her husband, Andrew Young, the Duke of Hawkins, looked anxiously aware of this fact as he clung to Diana like he feared she would capsize.

"There you are, Emily," Diana cried, reaching out one arm to pull Emily towards her, so she could plant a kiss on her cheek. "And Rose, look at you! You look beautiful. Are you enjoying your debut?"

"Very much so," Rose agreed. And then, when Emily stepped on her foot, added, "Your Grace."

"Oh, stop it," Diana chided Emily. "I'm not going to stand on ceremony with your sisters." To Rose, she said, "Keep calling me ‘Diana.'"

Emily wanted to argue that the twins could only be aided by increased practice in decorum, but she didn't intend to argue with Diana in her current state…at least not while Diana's protective husband glared on like he thought his wife was made of glass.

Instead, she said, "Are you really meant to be out in a crush like this, Diana? I thought you'd already entered your confinement."

"No," said the Duke firmly just as Diana replied, waving an airy hand, "Oh, it's fine. Besides, confinement is boring."

"But you have all those novels," Andrew argued, sounding very much like a man at the end of his rope.

Diana smiled at him beatifically. "And I am as surprised as you are to learn that there is, in fact, a limit to my interest in enjoying sensationalized gothic fiction. And after a week of trying to relax and repose—" she said the words like they pained her. "—I have hit that limit. Besides, some physicians on the Continent believe activity is good for a mother-to-be. Thus, here I am."

"Where did you read that?" Andrew demanded suspiciously. "You don't read scientific papers. They're not bloodthirsty enough for you. Was it a novel? You do know novels are fiction, Diana!"

Diana waved her hand again, entirely unperturbed by her husband's increasingly frazzled air.

"One reads things," she said simply. Then, before Andrew could retort—as he clearly looked poised to do—she grinned again. "Look! There's Frances. Hello, darling."

"Um, hello," Frances said, a touch nervously. Frances had become somewhat more comfortable expressing herself around Diana's husband in the year since their friend had wed, but Emily knew it was still a struggle. "Good to see you, Your Grace, Diana, Emily, Rose," she said in order, with a nod to each member of their little circle.

"Good evening, Lady Frances," Andrew said.

Frances furrowed her brow as she looked at Diana. "Are you sure you're meant to be out, Diana?" she asked cautiously.

"You see!" Andrew burst out as though he could hold it back no longer. "I am not a madman, Diana. I told you it was highly irregular for you to come out in your condition, but you insisted that I was being absurd. No woman would think as I did; that's what you said! And yet, here we have two women—your dear friends, no less—who seem inclined to my way of thinking."

Diana scowled up at him. "I don't know why you're so bothered about this, Andrew, truly I don't. I feel fine. And you don't see me telling you when you need rest, do you?"

"Yes," said Emily, Andrew, and Frances all at once. Andrew looked intensely smug at this; Frances looked mortified.

Rose, the only one who hadn't spoken, looked highly entertained by this whole thing.

"I love Society," she whispered happily.

"That was different," Diana told her husband sternly. "You'd been shot."

"You were shot?" Rose asked, aghast and visibly intrigued. Emily winced. She'd been hiding the gossip pages for weeks to stop the twins from learning about that as she'd no doubt it would excite their curiosity beyond manageable limits.

Fortunately, Andrew did not even glance at Rose. His stern gaze was fixed on his wife. "You don't even like coming to balls, Diana," he insisted.

"Ah," she said, "but I am needed at this ball."

Andrew sighed. "Explain."

Diana practically vibrated with triumph. "Well, Emily is here chaperoning her sisters, is she not?" Emily wondered how on earth she was at the middle of this marital debate but decided her best chances of escaping unscathed involved not putting forth that question. "But Emily herself is unmarried. What if she attracts a suitor? Then who will chaperone the twins? I'm clearly the logical choice, Andrew."

Emily could think of approximately ten rebuttals to this, but she chose to offer the one that her sister was most likely to latch on to and save for later.

"I'm not going to attract a suitor, Diana," she said.

Diana looked affronted. "I don't see why not, Emily Rutley. You're lovely, you're clever, you're from a fine family. There's no reason why a gentleman shouldn't admire you. You're simply being difficult."

Rose, watching her sister get scolded by an enormously pregnant duchess, looked as though she'd died and gone to heaven.

"I'm not—" Emily began, but Frances' hasty tap on her arm halted her. She looked down at her friend, who nodded over Emily's shoulder.

"Amanda is coming," Frances whispered.

Emily turned. Indeed, Amanda was approaching them, her arm linked with that of a gentleman.

Emily felt the flash of relief that only truly struck her when both her sisters were present, accounted for, and not involved in any form of mischief. That relief lasted only a moment, however, for in the next instant she looked at the gentleman accompanying her sister.

"You!" she gasped.

It was the gentleman from earlier, the dreadfully rude one who had harassed her on the ballroom floor. She was so shocked to see him that it was only when Frances cleared her throat quietly that Emily realized how dreadfully rude her own reaction had been as well. Flustered, she refused to make eye contact with the man, turning instead to her sister.

"Oh good, Amanda," she said, forcing a smile onto her face, "I was looking for you. And here you are. Good, good."

Despite also refusing to make eye contact with her friends, Emily couldn't miss the highly intrigued look she was receiving from Diana.

"Yes, hello," Amanda said, blinking at Emily like she'd grown a second head. "Emily, I would like to introduce the Earl of Moore, Lord Benedict Hoskins. My Lord, this is my sister, Miss Emily Rutley."

Emily's mind blanked, only her body drawing upon its years of training to drop her into the requisite curtsey. The Earl of Moore. The Earl of Moore.

If this dreadful gentleman was the Earl of Moore, that meant his mother was the Dowager Countess of Moore.

From the sharp way Diana sucked in a breath, Emily knew the connection was not lost on her friend, either.

The Dowager Countess of Moore had played a role, however obliquely, in the incident that had left Andrew shot and fighting for his life during the previous Season. Diana's husband had taken a bullet to the shoulder after an altercation with a man named Theodore Dowling who, they had discovered, was the villain responsible for killing Lady Grace Miller, Diana, Frances, and Emily's dear friend.

Dowling's confession, made only moments before his death, had come as a shock, not only to Grace's loved ones but to all of Society, who had believed the culprit already punished. Indeed, Andrew's father, the late Duke of Hawkins, had been hanged for Grace's murder several years prior. This miscarriage of justice was not quite as horrifying as it could have been, given that Andrew and Diana had discovered proof of the late Duke's culpability in many other crimes, but it had still struck the ton with all the force of a boulder falling into a tranquil pond. The waves of gossip and speculation had lapped for months.

The question one everyone's tongues has been thus: how had Theodore Dowling (who had, in the end, turned out to be no gentleman at all, merely a pretender) gotten sufficient access to the upper echelons of Society such that he could come to encounter Grace Miller, let alone kill her?

The answer came to light, eventually, sending tongues wagging with new shock.

Theodore Dowling had been having an affair with the Dowager Countess of Moore. The woman had evidently been as duped as the rest of them, but still, Emily did not find it easy to forgive the woman her lack of good sense when it had cost the world Grace's light.

"How…nice to meet you, Miss Rutley," the Earl said with a perfunctory bow.

At his hesitation, too marked to be anything but intentional, fury rose inside Emily as inexorable as the tides.

How dare this this man act like Emily was the problem when his mother had—had liaised with a murderer!

"I see you've met my sister," she said icily, not returning the pleasantry. "Perhaps you also know my friends, the Duke and Duchess of Hawkins?"

If Emily had been in the mood to give the Earl credit, she might have granted him some for the miniscule flinch that crossed his face.

"A pleasure, Your Graces," he said, the greeting just long enough to be polite, and then his eyes were back on Emily.

She narrowed hers at him.

"Emily," Amanda said, a note of warning in her voice, "His Lordship said that he would like to pay us a call during visiting hours tomorrow. Isn't that lovely?"

"No." The word came out of Emily like a whip.

"Emily!" Rose exhorted in an urgent whisper.

Emily knew she was being unladylike—possibly even irrational. The only accusation she could throw at the Dowager Countess' feet was that of poor judgment and perhaps, insufficient discretion when it came to her amorous pursuits. Emily might be unmarried, but she was not na?ve; she knew it was common, even accepted, for widows to have liaisons so long as those affairs were kept quiet.

And she could scarcely fault the Earl for his mother's poor selection; for one, such things were not inherited, and for another, he'd chosen Amanda, who, despite her penchant for trouble, was one of Emily's favorite people in the world.

But Emily had looked after her sisters for all their lives. Protecting them was a habit, one she had no intention of breaking. And she loved them too dearly to let any whiff of the trouble that had affected their lives—had ended Grace's life and nearly Andrew's, too—near her sisters.

Additionally, the man had been unforgivably rude.

"No?" the Earl asked, sounding almost amused. "I assure you, Miss Rutley, it is quite the done thing for a gentleman to pay a call to a lady after he enjoys a dance with her. If you've not had the experience to inform you of this, I should be glad to provide a book. I can bring it to your house when I pay my call tomorrow."

Emily's mouth dropped open in shock. The gall of the man! He'd all but called her an unappealing spinster, right here in the middle of everyone!

Andrew seemed to agree that this went a bit far. "Now see here," he said sternly.

The Earl tipped his head toward the Duke in a conciliatory manner though his eyes remained fixed on Emily's. "No offense meant, I assure you," he said in what was one of the most patently obvious lies Emily had ever heard. "The younger Miss Rutley here had merely informed me that her sister was serving as a slightly unconventional chaperone. It's why she was so eager for us to meet, you see," he added.

At this, Emily's glace flickered over to Amanda who was looking…well, furious was too mild a term for it, Emily thought.

"A chaperone's duty," she said through gritted teeth, "is to protect her charges from unsuitable advances."

"Emily!" This time the word came from Amanda, a low warning.

Emily ignored it. The Earl did, too.

"I cannot think why you should think me unsuitable, Miss Rutley," he said, the words a challenge.

"I," she returned, "cannot be held responsible for your inability to think."

The Earl's expression flickered briefly in a way that suggested he was amused by this exchange. Diana choked back a sound that said she was definitely amused by this exchange. Emily, decidedly unamused, kept her spine straight and her chin tilted up as she looked the Earl of Moore directly in the eye.

It was Amanda who broke the fraught moment.

"Oh, you are awful!" she exclaimed, stamping her foot petulantly like an angry child. "I am positively sick to death of you, Emily!"

And then she turned on her heel and fled, Rose only steps behind her.

Emily felt a wave of misery overtake her though she could not quite call it regret. She hated angering her sisters, hated how often it was necessary. She hated it even more when she felt she'd gone about it in a manner that was…less than optimal.

For while she did not think the Earl of Moore had any business around her sister, she supposed she could admit that there might have been a better way to express her disapproval than by quarreling with the man in public.

This, she decided in an instant, was something else she could lay at the feat of the dratted Earl of Moore.

"Look at what you've done now!" she cried, dismay loosening her tongue and causing her to forget that, mere moments ago, she'd recognized the foolishness of fighting with him in the middle of a ball.

"Me?" He looked appalled. "I haven't?—"

But she had neither the time nor the inclination to fight with him. Instead of waiting to hear the rest of his retort—which would, no doubt, have been nothing but nonsense, anyway—she stepped aside, ready to pursue her sisters.

And that would have been fine, except the wretched, terrible, awful Earl of Moore had evidently decided that he, too, needed to depart in precisely that moment—never mind that he didn't have any furious sisters to chase after. They moved—together yet opposite—nearly crashing into one another for a second time that evening.

This time, however, Emily saw it coming. She jerked herself back before they could collide…

And her slipper lost traction on the polished ballroom floor. She careened backwards, her mind conjuring the half hysterical thought that perhaps it was destiny that wanted to see her flat on her bum in front of the ton this evening. How else could she explain that this had happened twice?

Except once again, she did not fall. Once again, strong arms came around her, halting her progress towards the ground.

It was not her shoulders the Earl of Moore grasped this time, however. No, this time when he lunged to stop Emily from falling to the ground, he seized her by her waist, pulled her up firmly until she was pressed well and firmly against him.

Against the whole of him, she realized with a startled blink. Impossibly, her hands were pressed against his chest. What on earth were they doing there? His gaze bore into hers, intense and sharp and lit with something that was not quite animosity. Something about that gaze made Emily feel even more breathless than had the near fall.

"Oh my," breathed Frances.

This seemed to jolt the Earl, at least, back into his senses.

"I beg your pardon," he said gruffly.

"Right," Emily replied which was terribly inane, but her mind didn't seem to be working quite correctly.

But then he blinked, and she blinked, and the severing of that hypnotic gaze was enough that she could gather a smidgen of her composure. She realized, abstractly, that she had only moments before her mortification caught up with her, so she hastily got her feet underneath her, tore herself out of the Earl's grasp, and—it was cowardly, she knew—refused to so much as glance at her friends.

"I must find my sisters," she said stiffly. "If you all will excuse me. Good evening."

And then she fled.