Chapter 8

CHAPTER8

Both being outcasts in their own particular way, only Emma and Eliza were able to drop everything at a moment’s notice and set off for Hudson Court, per Silas’s request. Although, there was one other lady who was at something of a loose end, who leaped at the opportunity to spend a week at a fine, country estate.

“Do you know anything of the estate?” Nora asked, her nose pressed up against the carriage window, fogging her spectacles.

Eliza was snoring loudly leaning back against the opposite squabs, a half-eaten boiled egg clutched in her hand. With every bounce and jostle of the carriage, Emma was certain it was going to free itself from her grip. Yet, every time, Eliza somehow managed to keep possession of the sulfurous delicacy.

“I know… nothing of the estate or the man,” Emma replied, still watching the egg.

And I am as excited by that as I am terrified, she did not dare to admit, not even to her best friend. Perhaps, she would when they were alone, but if Eliza could keep hold of an egg while sleeping, there was no telling what she could also overhear in the midst of her slumber.

After all, Eliza had made it quite clear that she did not favor the Duke of Hudson one bit.

“Too certain of himself,” she had said the previous evening, while they were packing and making arrangements. “And let us not forget the irritating mystery of where he has been all this time. No one simply vanishes, Emma. Not without me knowing where they have gone. It is bizarre and I do not like it. I do not think he is right for you.”

But Emma had not been able to restore the chunk of faith that she had lost in her godmother, after reading the awful article in the scandal sheets. As such, she had decided that she would not put too much faith in what her godmother said, going forward, either.

Besides, it did not really matter at all what the duke was like, for by the week’s end they would have parted anyway. She would not pay the steep price of marriage, no matter what he thought, so he was going to have to settle for a week of her time—nothing more, nothing less.

“Fate conspires in strange ways, does it not?” Nora said with a sigh of relief, as she wiped her spectacles on the skirts of her dress. “Before the month is over, you will be married, your father will have no cause to complain, and all will be well again. You will be well again, and Lydia will be permitted a few more years before she enters into the institution of marriage, too.”

Emma balked. “I have not spent this week with him yet. Let us not leap ahead.”

There was a good chance he might persist with this marriage nonsense, but she had a plan for that. A scheme that she decided was best to keep to herself for now. Nevertheless, if he persisted with the proposal, she would find a way to change his mind, just as she hoped to find a way to win back her father’s favor. The two, however, could not be tied together.

“But you are considering the offer, or you would not be journeying to him,” Nora pointed out, flashing a knowing smile. “I suspect you like him. Indeed, I am quite furious that everyone else has met him and I have not!”

Emma turned up her nose. “I do not like him. I do not know him.” She hesitated, knowing she could not hoodwink her friend. “But he is charming, he is… interesting, and I do owe him a debt. Whatever the outcome of this week, my debt to him will be paid.”

“And how will you pay it?” Nora wiggled her eyebrows and received a light smack on the arm for her mischievous efforts.

“I should have left you at home,” Emma mumbled, deeply grateful that her best friend was with her, for she would surely prove to be a better chaperone—albeit an unofficial, unsanctioned one—than Eliza.

Nora grinned and dug around in her carpet bag, producing sandwiches. “When are the others arriving, or do you think it might be a ruse and they will not be coming at all? You know, one of those, “Oh, yes, I would be delighted to attend. I will send word of when we should meet,” and then they never do sort of things?”

“Marina and Jasper will come,” Emma said with some certainty. “I cannot speak for the others, though they did promise, and they did say that I was as good as family to them now.”

Nora passed Emma what appeared to be a ham and mustard sandwich. “Well, I shall rage on your behalf if they let you down. No one abandons my best friend in her hour—or week—of need.”

“Have I told you lately how utterly lost I would be without you?” Emma smiled, feeling a little teary as she took the sandwich.

Nora chuckled. “The obvious does not need to be stated between dear friends.”

They spent the better part of the journey like that, chattering and eating and recounting old stories that they had both told a thousand times, laughing and grinning as if the tales were new. And for that blissful hour, Emma’s worries fell away, the carriage too full of noise and cheer to allow any concerns to creep in. Although, Eliza slept through all of it.

But the carriage journey had always had a destination, and as the driver halted the carriage and the footman jumped down to open wide a set of towering iron gates, Emma realized that the end was now in sight—or would be, if she were to stick her head out of the window to take a peek.

The trouble was, she did not dare.

Nora, on the other hand had no such qualms.

“Oh my goodness!” she gasped, wedging a shoulder out into the sticky afternoon heat. “You have got to see this, Em!”

“I think I will wait until we reach the manor,” Emma replied, sitting as far back into the squabs as the velvet cushioning would allow.

Closing her eyes against Nora’s sounds of amazement, all of the memories that Emma had squashed down began to rise to the surface, popping into her mind with taunting abandon:

Silas’s rough palm upon her face, his thumb skimming her cheek; Silas’s fingers twisting in her hair, tucking the wayward lock behind her ear; Silas’s face, so close to hers she had feared he might kiss her, and had feared it all the more because, for a jolting half-second, she had wanted him to.

“It would be mutually… satisfying.” She could not forget those damned words of his, no matter how hard she tried. The way they had spooled off his tongue like silk, wrapping around her throat, tightening until she had not been able to squeeze a breath past.

Strangest of all, she did not know why her entire being had responded like that to what were almost certainly five perfectly innocent words. He needed to marry to appease his family, she needed to marry if she was ever going to be able to see her sister again and show her face in the world without everyone leaving whatever room she stepped into.

All too soon, the carriage came to a standstill on a wide, circular driveway of gray gravel, with an old fountain in the center that had long ceased spouting water. It depicted a half-naked man with a trident, spearing what looked like a huge, fanged, monstrous eel. There was not a bit of it that had not succumbed to lichen and tarnish, making the scene twice as unsettling.

“Are we here?” Eliza awoke with a start, and promptly popped the last of her boiled egg into her mouth, chewing as she squinted out of the window. “Ah… I remember this place.”

Emma finally dared to take a peek… and was met with the most dismal manor that she had ever beheld. Four tremendous stories of gloom, the curtains all drawn though it was a blazing summer afternoon, the sandstone worn and weathered and in desperate need of a clean. It likely should have been a glorious golden yellow but, instead, the stone was gray. Everything was so very… gray.

“Is it too late to return to Peverley?” Emma asked, only half joking.

Eliza seized her hand and squeezed it tight. “Nora and I will protect you, dearest Emma. It is but a week, and what is a mere week in relation to a lifetime? It is a speck, easily forgotten if it does not go well.” She smiled reassuringly. “No matter what you decide, we shall support you. There will always be a place in my home for you.”

“And in mine,” Nora said.

Eliza raised an eyebrow. “Shall we, then? Or shall we return to Peverley?”

“Let us… enjoy this speck in time,” Emma said, taking a deep breath. “Perhaps, it will be precisely what I need to confirm what I already suspect…”

“And what is that?” Eliza prompted, tilting her head to one side.

Emma mustered her most courageous smile. “That I was always destined for a nunnery.”