Chapter Fifteen

Chris was waiting for him when Rafe arrived at the tavern late in the afternoon immediately after his meeting with Sir Roger. "Dannyboy's mum is in better spirits today," Chris said, nodding to the woman who was busy serving another table. "She embraced ‘im, when ‘e came in."

"Did she?" Rafe asked as he sank into his chair.

"'E flinched at first," Chris said, the corner of his mouth turning down into a grimace. "I reckon ‘e don't know much what to expect from ‘er. A slap or a hug—either's just as likely. ‘Ow's Em?"

"She's got an appointment with her modiste today. Means to get herself out of mourning colors." He'd told her greens and blues, which would go well with her hair, her eyes. Probably he would never see them on her.

"Get anything useful from ‘er lately?"

"Nothing that has proved helpful in deciphering the journal thus far." He'd always been subtle in his questions, letting her guide the flow of information. But it had sat increasingly ill with him to attempt to pry information from her, when he had grown only more convinced that she had no such information to give. With one hand, Rafe swiped at his face in a vain effort to relieve the frown that had settled there. "Chris, I can't do this any longer."

"What do ye mean by that?"

"You know damned well what I mean." Rafe hadn't meant to say the words quite so bluntly, but they had sprung free anyway, forced through his lips on sudden upsurge of shame. "Christ," he said, in a guttural voice, and admitted to it at last. "I just can't. I can't keep concealing the truth from her."

Chris fell silent, his knuckles going white around the glass he held in his hand. "Ye got what ye wanted of it," he said finally. "No sense in scruples now."

No, he hadn't. He had got the damned shadow of what he had wanted. A pale imitation, a bloody ghost of a secret, cherished dream. And God, it hurt so damned much to know that it would end. That it had always been bound to end. That the only thing real in it was his love, and he could not give it to her, because when she learned the truth, she wouldn't want it.

He and Chris had agreed so many years ago that they alone would bear the burden, to spare it from falling upon Emma's shoulders. A secret they would take to their graves, because they both loved her, because it would have been an act of cruelty to pry from her the illusions she had held about her marriage, about her husband.

And he might have been able to shoulder that burden indefinitely, only now—now he had betrayed her, too. With every day that passed between them, every hour he spent in her company, the stain upon his soul grew a bit darker. It didn't matter that he had loved her. Still he had used her. And that—that would be unforgivable.

Chris said, slack-jawed with disbelief, "Ye want to tell her."

And Rafe could only give a doleful nod, his shoulders hunching.

"She'll ‘ate us, then," Chris said.

But he had known what the consequences would be when he had come to this decision. "I can't do it any longer," he reiterated, his voice pitched low. Because Emma deserved to know who she had welcomed into her home, into her bed. And he had made certain she did not, because he had known she would never want him.

He had always known it, but it hurt, somehow, to acknowledge it. Because he had come to learn how well they might have suited one another if he hadn't ruined any chance of it years ago. But now she loved the man she imagined him to be. The man he deceived her into believing he was.

It was there in her relief at his arrival each evening, in the way she curled into his arms. In the very trust she had extended toward him—a trust he had violated in more ways than she could possibly know. A trust he had surrendered any right to long before she had even learned his name.

"She will hate us, Rafe," Chris said again, enunciating it clearly, as if by exercising proper diction, he might make Rafe better understand the perils of their situation.

"No," Rafe said. "She'll hate me." Because Chris was her damned brother, and she would, in time, forgive him. She would extend that grace to him because she would understand why he had done it, that he had only wanted to spare her the pain, the humiliation, the damned agony of betrayal. Chris had placed all of them in this wretched mess, and Rafe was bitterly aware that among them, he was the only one who would walk away relatively unscathed. "She deserves to know, Chris. Hasn't she been deceived enough? First Ambrose, and now us."

Emma was going to be destroyed.

He was going to be destroyed.

Chris swore vividly, throwing back the remainder of his drink with a guttural snarl. "We'll tell her together, then," he said. "Tomorrow."

"Tonight," Rafe said fervently. "Tonight. It has to be tonight. I can't—" I can't let her love a man who by all rights she ought to loathe. "I can't," he concluded feebly. Only that.

Better his broken heart than hers. He comforted himself that whatever the depths of her loathing for him, they would never approach his own.

∞∞∞

The carriage had moved perhaps a length forward in the last quarter of an hour. Raised voices on the street outside suggested that there had been some to-do that was impeding the flow of traffic ahead. Congestion of this sort was a reality anywhere in the city, but especially at this hour, and Emma had forgotten to bring a book or anything that might otherwise have alleviated the boredom of waiting.

She had left her modiste's shop in Soho and had not yet managed to make it out of Soho before the carriage had slowed to a dismal crawl. At this rate, she would likely not arrive back at her home before Rafe did. Probably walking would be a sight quicker.

At least she would have a few new gowns for her troubles, though the first of them would not be completed for some days yet. It had been so long since she had dressed in anything but greys and light shades of purple that the jewel-toned fabrics on offer had seemed almost jarringly bright to her eyes, but still she had let the modiste drape her in them and had agreed that they looked fine.

Rafe would approve. She knew he would. And she could not deny the odd little skip of her heart at the thought, the flutter of it in her chest. A sensation she'd not felt in years, since she had let herself believe that Ambrose had been courting her out of fondness, out of love. Like a part of her she'd thought she'd buried along with her husband had revealed itself only to be hibernating.

She was years too old for this sort of giddiness. She hadn't even been so giddy when she had been a girl. And yet, somehow Rafe evoked it within her. A sort of happiness that had never been within her reach before now felt tantalizingly close.

What on earth could be taking so long? Emma peered out the window of the carriage, attempting to see through the cluster of carriages before her to the problem. Her eyes scanned the street, but whatever it was had to be some distance ahead, well out of sight.

Instead, her gaze landed upon a door just a bit up the street. A green-lacquered door, with a bronze knocker in the shape of a fisted hand. And there just above it, the street address—three. It could not be a coincidence…could it? Before she was aware of having made the decision, she had opened the door of the carriage, sliding out into the street.

From his seat topside, her coachman called down to her, "Beg pardon, my lady. There's some nasty bit of business ahead. If you'll just—"

"I'll walk a bit," Emma called back. "If you make it through before I've returned, I'll hire out a hack to convey me home."

"My lady!" the coachman called in protest, but his voice was swiftly lost to the rumble of voices around her, the shouting from somewhere on ahead, and the chatter of passersby upon the street. The hour was still fashionable; the pavement full of people bustling about their business. She was only one of the faceless throng now, meandering through the crowd toward that door, the one that had to be Rafe's.

There were just a few steps leading up to the door, and she climbed them one at a time, lifted her hand to grasp the knocker—and paused.

What if he did not admit her? He had never told her where it was that he lived, after all, had never provided her his address. He was content to communicate through notes delivered by Dannyboy, and she had thought it convenient…at the time. For both of them. No risk of potential gossip should someone discover they had been sending letters back and forth to one another, after all, and the service provided Dannyboy a tidy income and a reason to visit her home for breakfast, or to sit in on a lesson or two. Perfectly convenient.

But what if he had never intended for her to know his address? If he denied her, or rebuked her for the presumption of turning up upon his doorstep? He had as much a right to privacy as did she.

He might be in possession of a key to her home, might have the freedom to come and go as he pleased, but he had not extended that same privilege to her.

She owed him the courtesy of asking first, rather than assuming. Slowly her hand released the knocker, and she descended the steps and turned back toward the street in the hopes of finding an opportune moment to venture once more out into traffic. The coachman had not gotten far; she could still catch up to her carriage. And then this evening, she would broach the subject with Rafe of visiting him for once—

"Emma? Whatever are you doing here?"

A frisson of surprise slid up her spine at the sound of her name, and she turned to find Diana there upon the pavement, hand in hand with her stepdaughter, Hannah.

"Oh," she said, flushing. "Diana, how lovely to see you. I was in the area for an appointment with my modiste. But there is so much traffic, I thought to avoid a long ride home with a visit to a—a friend. And you?"

A tiny frown pitched itself between Diana's dark brows. "We came to invite my brother for dinner," she said. "Ben has got the carriage, but the walk isn't too terribly far. And the weather is lovely for it today."

There was the strangest tone lingering within Diana's voice, a sort of confusion, as if she had not quite been satisfied with Emma's explanation. "Oh, well, then, I won't keep you," Emma said. "I think my carriage is nearly through the worst of it, besides."

"Of course," Diana said slowly. And then she seemed to shake herself of the strange stupor she had found herself in and ventured, "Forgive me. It's just that I was surprised to see you here in particular. I wasn't aware you knew my brother."

"I—I'm not certain what you mean," Emma said, but the words had come out slightly shrill. There was a sourness that had begun there in the pit of her stomach, along with a dreadful churning. Her heart skipped across a few beats; her palms began to sweat. It was as though all the disparate parts of her body had come to some horrible realization that her mind had refused to accept.

"My brother," Diana repeated, blinking behind the rims of her spectacles. "Rafe. You've just come down the steps of his house."

∞∞∞

"Do ye want to fetch ‘er down, or shall I?" Chris asked as he stepped inside the terrace door after Rafe.

"You'd better," Rafe said, aware of the grim tone of his own voice. It was inflected, he thought, with the sound of mourning. As if he had already begun to grieve. Probably Emma would want him nowhere near her bedchamber in the immediate hereafter. The darkness of the room felt nearly claustrophobic, like the house itself had begun to shut him out.

"Nobody need fetch me down." Emma's clear, crisp voice sailed through the darkness on a snap of fury. She had been waiting there, still and silent as a grave. Waiting for him to arrive.

A prickle of alarm set the hairs at the nape of his neck standing on end, as if the winter chill had wafted through the door behind him—but no. Chris had closed the door upon entering. The chill had been only the icy blast of Emma's ire. A cold and frigid thing it was, too dark and deep for any heat to live within it.

They both froze, he and Chris, in the wake of it. Straight to the floor where they stood.

He said, "Emma—" But his voice broke upon her name. Even his tongue knew he hadn't any right to speak it. But it didn't matter, because he had no idea what he had intended to say, or why she was already so angry.

She folded her arms across her chest in a defensive little motion, as if to guard herself against his words. The darkness clung to her so sweetly, holding her within it until she was only a faint outline. "I saw my friend Diana this afternoon," she said. "On the steps of your house."

"Christ." Chris scowled. "Ye gave her yer address?"

"No, he did not," Emma said, though the sharpness of her voice condemned Chris too. "But Dannyboy described it. I happened to pass it on my way home from the modiste, and I thought—" There was a vague movement in the shadows, the woeful shake of her head. "It doesn't matter. Diana was there. Wondering what might have brought me to her brother's door."

Hell.

"You lied to me," Emma said, the coldness of her voice breaking in a sharp, pinging fracture. Her shattered trust was audible within it. "You knew who I was. You let me blather on like an idiot, but you knew. I wondered why you had never shared with me your surname—why you told me nothing substantial of yourself. It was because you knew I would know you if you did. That I would never—never—" Her voice scratched away into a fraught silence broken only by the distressed pant of her breath, tiny gasps she could not smother. The sort of sounds one might make when a fist had been introduced to one's gut. Breath stolen by his perceived cruelty.

"I didn't lie," he said. In fact, he had made a concentrated effort not to. "Everything I have told you was the truth."

"But not all of the truth."

"No," Rafe admitted, his hands flexing at his sides in a queer sort of impotence when he would have liked to reach for her, to comfort her. Knowing that she would rebuff him if he did. Knowing that she would revile him when the rest of it came to light.

"Then you lied by omission. You deliberately concealed things. Things you knew I would have preferred to know. Things I deserved to know!"

"Yes," he said, in a toneless voice, helpless but to take the accusations she slung at him, for she had earned every ounce of her ire. She just hadn't learned the whole of it yet.

"And you!" She flung the words at Chris, who flinched beneath the lash of them. "I told you what I wanted. The very last thing I wanted was a man of my own social set—and you sent me my dearest friend's brother!" She took a step back, though neither of them had moved in the interim, as if even the several feet away she stood was still far too close for her taste. "I don't know what is true," she said fiercely. "But I know you—both of you—have lied to me. I deserve to know why."

"Tell her." The words scraped Rafe's throat like rusty knives as they emerged. "Tell her everything. But do me the small courtesy of waiting until I've gone," Rafe said to Chris as he reached into his coat pocket and withdrew the journal, setting it into Chris' hands.

"You owe me an explanation," Emma said in a furious whisper.

"You'll have it." His hand had already curled around the door handle, and the icy gust of the winter air in his face felt balmy in comparison to the frigid blast of her antipathy. "You'll have it. But I can't stay and—" And watch your love turn to hate. He couldn't even bring himself to voice the words aloud. It would kill him. It was going to kill him anyway, but at least it would a slow sort of death. A lingering one. A consumption of the heart he had lost so long ago. "I'm sorry," he said. At last. The very words that had been stuck in his throat these last ten years, aching to be spoken. So paltry, so inadequate. They could not hope to scratch the surface of his regret, could not convey even the smallest fraction of his remorse.

The door closed behind him as he walked out into the night.

So damned sorry, Emma.