Chapter Nine

Dannyboy to see you, my lady."

Emma scarcely heard the words over the roar of the children assembled at the breakfast table, though she most certainly saw the bundle of flowers that the boy whisked beneath her nose as he arrived at her side.

"My, these are…lovely," Emma managed, restraining a sneeze at the ticklish sensation of the blossoms beneath her nose. In fact they were not lovely—or at least, they weren't any longer. Probably they once had been, but the journey to reach her, however long it had been, had not been kind to them. The vivid blue and purple stalks of flowers had been nearly snapped down the middle, half the blossoms crushed from some mishap or other. Carefully she pried them from Dannyboy's hand and gave them a cursory sniff—as one was meant to do—before she handed them over to Neil to place somewhere.

From her left, little Janet leveled an assessing stare at Dannyboy and inquired, "Is he staying with us, ma'am?"

Dannyboy wrinkled his nose right back at her. "Nah. Jes' come to deliver the flowers and a note. Oh! Clean forgot." He thrust one grubby hand into his pocket and withdrew a folded bit of paper, which he extended to Emma. "Got to wait for an answer."

"Perhaps you'll take some breakfast, then," Emma invited as she accepted the note. "There is plenty going spare."

"I s'pose it couldn't ‘urt none," Dannyboy said, stretching onto his toes to peer down the length of the table, surveying the dishes available. "Bloody ‘ell, is that bacon? I'm lucky to nab a bit of toast."

Yes, she had rather suspected as much. "The children are at their lessons for much of the day," Emma said. "And such labors of the mind require a filling breakfast. More than simple toast and tea, naturally. Of course, if you would join our table, you will have to mind your manners. That means no foul language of any sort."

"Foul language?" he asked, his brows furrowed.

"Like bloody hell," Janet supplied, tipping her nose into the air. "You ought not say such things."

"That's not foul," Dannyboy said with a scoff. "I know lots worse."

Hastily, Emma interjected, "I'm certain you do—however, such words do not constitute amiable conversation at the table. We'll leave them where they belong: outside this room." She pushed back her chair and stood, gesturing to the vacant seat. "Here, Dannyboy, you may take my chair while I write a response to take to your employer. Neil, would you mind fetching Dannyboy a fresh plate?"

By the bow Neil gave and the tiny nod he offered in addition, she knew he had understood that he was meant to stand guard and to prevent certain indelicate conversation from cropping up in her absence.

Dannyboy was already reaching for the plate of bacon, leaning clear across the table to do so as Emma headed for the door to read the note in private. There was some sort of faint chiding from Neil as the door closed behind her, paired with a snide rejoinder from Dannyboy, and Emma scrubbed one palm over her mouth as she headed for the nearest private room.

At least the boy would have a decent breakfast today. She was certain Neil would be telling himself the same, no matter how many of his nerves Dannyboy managed to fray in the process.

The note unfurled in her hand.

Do not, I beg you, be so foolhardy as to leave your door unlocked a second time. Dannyboy can be trusted to carry a key, should you desire my company again.

- Rafe

Emma choked on a flutter of laughter. Perhaps, she supposed, a key would hold up better to Dannyboy's custody than had a bundle of flowers. After all, they tended to be made of stronger stuff than frothy stalks of blossoms.

If Rafe had a key, he might come and go at his leisure. Did she want him to have such freedom of her house? A dangerous man, by his own admission? Then again, he had had his run of it evening last, and she had not noted anything out of the ordinary to mark his presence. Nor was he, she expected, possessed of a need for funds which might lend itself to thievery.

But the children—

No. If he had been the sort of man who was known to prey upon children, then surely either Neil or Dannyboy or one of the other children would have mentioned something of it. Street children, she had learned, had a rather remarkable instinct for making note of such men, and of staying well clear of them. They had to have, for their safety often depended upon their good judgment. And the children were tucked away within the dormitory wing at night, anyway, guarded by a bevy of staff charged with their safety.

The terrace door, then. He would know it already, and it was the exterior door closest to where she resided within the house. It would avert any further potentially awkward conversations with Neil, and keep the whispering of the staff to a minimum. Though she had no reason to believe any of them were prone to gossiping about her—she paid commendable wages to her staff, even to the lowest scullery maid—still it would be best not to court trouble.

It meant nothing more than convenience, she assured herself as she scratched out a note and tucked the key she had retrieved from the housekeeper's alcove within it, folding the paper neatly to form a secure pocket. Still the thought rang false even within her head.

The truth was something a bit wicked, she suspected: that she had found within the arms of a stranger something she had never experienced with her husband. That the lure of that connection could tempt a woman well past the bounds of reason.

She had gotten far more than she had expected from their association, however brief it had been. More than just to feel. Instead, for the first time in a decade or better, she felt alive once more.

∞∞∞

"Have you a pressing engagement elsewhere?" Diana inquired as she handed Emma a glass of ratafia, which she had retrieved from the refreshment table.

"What? Oh—no. No, nothing." Emma said as she received the glass. "Whyever do you ask?"

"Besides the fact that you've refused every invitation to dance?" Diana asked, with a sort of wry amusement. "You've been staring at the ballroom door for at least twenty minutes. Either you're expecting to see a familiar face appear within it, or you are calculating how many more minutes until it is acceptable to walk through it."

Had she been so ill-mannered as that? "I'm so sorry," Emma said. "It's a lovely ball. Really, it is." But it wasn't where she wished to be this evening. She had let it slip her mind entirely, and had invited Rafe to pay a call this evening—but unless she hurried home, it was likely that he'd arrive well before she did. And there were so few hours left between dark and dawn.

In the weeks that had passed since they had met, his evening visits had become a regular occurrence, and the high point of her days. She had often found herself counting the hours until she could expect him to arrive.

It simply wasn't the sort of thing to which one admitted in a crowded ballroom.

"It ought to be, with all the planning that Lydia and I have put into it," Diana mused with a sigh. "I do wish Rafe had decided to attend, however. It does grow wearying, extending invitations he so rarely accepts."

Yes; Emma knew well enough the inconstancy of brothers. "What is he like, your brother?" she asked.

Diana lifted her brows in surprise. "Oh," she said. "I suppose you have never had the occasion to meet him, have you? He's quite a lot of fun, really, when he is not intent upon being the most difficult of men. Hannah just adores him, naturally. Probably because he is always willing to carry her about upon his shoulders." She heaved a sigh, rubbing her midsection absently. "It would have been nice to have his attendance this evening, considering he surely would have got her out from beneath the refreshment table without quite as much fuss."

Emma hid a smile behind the rim of her glass. "And what was she doing beneath the refreshment table?"

"Sneaking bits of cake," Diana said, rolling her eyes heavenward. "I'm still not certain how she made it down from the nursery unobserved. Did you not hear the commotion?"

"I'm afraid I was a touch distracted."

"Phoebe found her, if you can believe it. Frightened her out of her wits, to see a hand creeping up behind the table to steal a bit of cake. She screamed like a banshee. I'm surprised you didn't hear it."

"But you and Lydia are to be congratulated for that," Emma said. "It's such a crush that I didn't hear a scream." And it was a crush—enough of one that the exterior doors to the terrace had been left open to allow the air, which had grown quite thick and hot, to better circulate. Even the winter chill in the air was a welcome respite from it.

Practically everyone who was returned to town from their winter holidays, and who had been lucky enough to receive an invitation, had attended. Except, of course, for Diana's middle brother.

Diana cast a shrewd glance at Emma. "It truly is a pity about Rafe, though," she said. "Do you know, I think the two of you would suit each other quite well."

Emma suppressed a patient sigh. "It is a known predilection of the newly-wedded to seek to guide others toward matrimony," she said. "I assure you, I have had my fill of it already."

"Yes, a decade ago, and not since," Diana said. "But you would suit," she persisted. "You're both clever, sly—"

"Sly!"

"You are," Diana charged. "You are a keeper of secrets, Emma, and don't think I don't know it. It is a little unfair of you, as I have told you all of mine."

"And I have kept them," Emma said. "Really, Diana, I am not seeking another husband. I have only just resolved to clear out Ambrose's things. I am not eager to put a new gentleman in his place."

"Have you, then?" Diana asked. "Still, I suppose it is a step in a promising direction. I never knew him, but from what I have gleaned, I cannot imagine it an easy task for you."

It wasn't, but she had lived with the ghosts for too long. Shades of their marriage still haunted the house, deepening with every year she had let them go to rot there. "I found his journal a few weeks ago," she confessed. "I hadn't even known he kept one." She had known so little of him, and it had hurt her to realize it. To grow to understand now, years later, just how very empty her marriage had been. That the precious gem she had thought she had held cradled in the palm of her hand had turned out to be only paste.

"Really? And what did it contain?"

Emma shrugged. "I haven't been able to bring myself to read it," she said. "I suppose…there are things about him—about our marriage—that I never truly wanted to know."

Diana gave a grave nod. "I suppose I can understand that," she said. "But have you considered that the not knowing might prove worse than the knowing? You must clean a wound before it can heal. It might hurt like the very devil, but it is necessary."

Emma supposed there was a sort of truth in it. She had been forced to confront a few truths lately that had hurt to discover, but had also brought with them a sort of freedom she had not expected. What was one more truth, painful though it might be, when added to the rest?

"Go, then," Diana urged, nudging her gently in the ribs with the point of her elbow. "If you slip out between sets, you won't be missed."

Emma startled at the command. "Are you certain?" she asked. "You and Lydia worked so diligently to produce such a marvelous event—"

"Your mind is plainly elsewhere," Diana said, and softened the words with a smile. "I forgive you already. But I do want to hear of what—or who—has pulled you away eventually."

Emma managed a rueful laugh. "Yes," she said. "Yes. I will tell you."

Eventually. But she would savor her secret just a little longer in the meantime.

∞∞∞

"Dannyboy tells me he stayed for breakfast again," Rafe said against the smooth skin of Emma's shoulder. "He was bursting with compliments to your chef."

"I imagine he was," Emma said from beneath the froth of bedsheets that had drifted over her face. "He ate straight through several rashers of bacon and half a dozen fried eggs besides. He wouldn't touch the sautéed mushrooms, however."

"The culinary palates of children are notoriously unrefined."

"I suppose so." A light laugh rolled up her throat. "Neil has had to watch him quite closely to ensure that he didn't give my children more of an education than is warranted. I'm afraid Dannyboy's conversational skills leave much to be desired." One of her small feet twitched against the side of his shin, her toes curling and relaxing. "Just how many children have you brought to me?" she asked as she tucked her head against her arm, which was splayed across the pillow.

Rafe's hand paused on its slow descent down the flat plane of her back. "What do you mean?"

"You brought Neil to me, did you not?"

"I did not. Chris—"

"Kit might have delivered him," Emma said, "but it was not his idea to do so."

No, it hadn't been. It would never have occurred to him to do so. Chris had lived many of his younger years in the same conditions as those they had brought to Emma; the thought had never entered his brain that there might be options other than the streets or the workhouse for children amongst the lowest rungs of society. There had never been for him. "Neil told you this?"

"Neil," she said. "And a few of the other children. A girl, Janet. A boy, Ian. That's three currently within my household. How many others?"

Well, there was no sense in denying it now. "I don't know. I've not counted." He traced the pad of one finger along her spine, felt the faint moisture of sweat there on her heated skin.

"But Neil was the first. I told you that, didn't I?"

"You did." That very first night, she had told him.

"You knew it already." It wasn't quite an accusation, but there was the smallest hint of confusion drifting there within the soft murmur of her voice. "I have the strangest feeling," she said, "that over these last weeks I have told you a great number of things which you already knew."

"I like to listen to you talk," he said evasively.

"How did you know?" she asked. "How did you know to send Neil to me? How did you know that I would take him in?" Her shoulder blades pinched at the ticklish sensation of his fingers between them.

"I didn't know," he said. "But Chris had made mention—a number of times—that you had had no children to show for your marriage. That you were alone in a house too large and too empty. And I thought—"

"You thought you would give me a child."

"Not…precisely." He dropped a kiss upon her shoulder and settled behind her, flattening one palm over her belly. "I thought Neil was in imminent danger of getting himself transported. He was trying his hand at pickpocketing, and he wasn't any good at it. He was bound to be caught, and by someone far less inclined toward mercy. I thought that he might be a welcome distraction, at least for an evening." In those early days, when she had done little more than walk the silent halls of her home wreathed in grief, it had seemed a reasonable assumption. "At best, I expected that you would feed him and house him for the evening. That he would leave in the morning, having had a decent meal and a good night's sleep, and perhaps avoid a stint in jail for an act undertaken in desperation."

"But he stayed," she said.

"Yes. He stayed. You kept him on." He hadn't expected it, but in retrospect, neither had it particularly surprised him.

"And you sent more children. With Kit." Her hand slid over his own, interlacing their fingers. An affectionate gesture, he thought. Because she had so much of it to give. That she would give it to him was an unexpected pleasure.

"Yes." And she had kept them, too. One by one, they had vanquished the silence, the emptiness, the gloom. Just as much as they had needed her, she had needed them.

"You were there," she said softly. "You were always there, and I never knew it." Her fingers squeezed his.

But she had never been meant to know it. He would never have told her. He had long ago accepted that any role he played in her life would be a bit part at best; a minor player just at the periphery. He had been born to it, after all—always the spare. Unnecessary, superfluous, largely unnoticed. Transparent as good glass.

It had never been him she wanted. Eventually, she would decide that she had had her fill of sleepless nights. And he would then be obligated to retreat once more into the shadows, as invisible as ever.

She said, in a low voice full of heartache, "Do you know, my husband never showed half as much care for me as you have."

He regretted that, truly. Of course, he had had no right at all to direct Ambrose on how to conduct himself within his marriage, but he regretted that Emma had suffered for it. He had never wished to be the one who had shattered the precious illusion she had held so dear.

A soft sigh, and she wiggled closer to him, as if the cold had crept in around her and she meant to use the heat of his body to drive it away. "I was at a ball this evening," she said. "And I found…I really didn't want to be there. I would rather have been here."

"Oh?"

"I told Diana—that is, the friend whose ball I attended—that I had been clearing out my husband's things, and she said something that has stuck within my head all evening. That wounds must be cleaned to heal properly." Her fingers drifted across the bed, sliding toward the nightstand. "I think she must be right. I have spent so many years living within the final chapter of a book that has ended. But these things do go on, don't they?"

"I suppose they must."

"I mean to say, I must go on. Ambrose's book ended years ago, but mine—mine is still unfinished. The words have stalled upon the page. Do you understand?"

"I'm a simple man. Metaphors are not my forte."

A hum of laughter. "I have to close his book," she said. "And let my own continue."

"Ah," he said. "Clearing out the past."

"More like cleaning it out. Like a wound, lest it fester." She pulled away, stretching herself toward the side of the bed, and her fingers grappled in the darkness for the handle of the drawer laid within her nightstand. It opened with the low whisk of wood against wood.

Rafe had long learned the necessity of keeping an even expression, of modulating his breathing, his voice, so as not to betray himself with an untoward word, or a sound, or even a twitch of his brow.

There was the sweep of her fingers within the empty drawer. The swift, indrawn breath of confusion. "That's odd," she said. "I'm—well, I was certain I put it in here."

"What?" he asked, keeping his voice light and neutral.

"My husband's journal." Still that lingering confusion in her voice. "It was here. I know it was." She made a soft sound of aggravation as she abandoned the search and cast herself back toward him. "And here I was, prepared to be brave."

"You're afraid of what you might find within it," he said, as if it had been a guess.

Her breath sighed out against his shoulder. "I was," she admitted. "I don't know where it could have gone. Though I suppose it'll turn up sooner or later." She muffled a yawn in her palm as she settled her head once more onto her pillow, muscles relaxing into the softness of encroaching sleep.

Rafe's cue to exit. "I ought to go," he said in a low murmur.

But Emma found his hand again with hers, her fingers weaving through his own. "You could stay," she offered.

"A stranger attracts notice even in quiet neighborhoods come the dawn. You don't want me to be seen leaving in the morning." By the wilt of her shoulders, he guessed that even if she might have wanted to protest it, still she understood the wisdom in it.

"Will you return this evening?" she asked, her lashes fluttering against her cheeks as her lids lowered once more.

Would that he could. "My apologies. I have a standing engagement on Thursdays." And a great deal of work to be done in the daylight hours, besides.

"So did my late husband," Emma said dryly. "He said he met friends at his club, but…I always thought he might have a mistress."

He hadn't—at least, not during the duration of his marriage, because if Rafe and Chris had ever learned of it, they would have beaten him to a pulp—but neither had he spent his Thursday evenings at his club.

"I suppose you maintain a subscription at a club?"

Yes. The same one his brother patronized, in fact, though it had been some time indeed since he'd made use of it. "I do. I don't spend much time there." He allowed himself one last caress across the smooth slope of her back. "Friday."

Another yawn, given into the plush stuffing of the pillow beneath her head. "Friday, then," she said as she faded into sleep.