What she wanted no longer mattered. If it ever had. She must travel all the way to London to escape her reputation and find a new project. And she must beat down her pride to help the man whose tenants of courtship infuriated her.
She dropped the letter back into the box and moved to shut it. Something pink winked at her, pinched at her heart, and drew her hands forward. She didn’t want to remember. Not tonight. She’d locked the handkerchief up tight solely so she would never have to think about it.
It slipped easily out of the box and felt like love against her skin. The fine linen and expertly stitched shapes poured memories into her palms. Her mother just before her death, stitching with thin fingers and gaunt face. For the new baby, Emma had thought, the new babe who seemed to drain away her mother’s health. But when her mama had folded the handkerchief neatly and pressed it into Emma’s palm, she’d said, “For you, dearest. For your wedding day. I want to be with you in some way.”
Emma had pushed it back at her mother. She did not want a square of linen! She wanted Mama, needed her. Rarely did people get what they wanted, or even what they needed. She’d found the gift a few weeks after her mother’s death when she’d finally dared to enter her room. Dark, stale air, emptiness. It all washed over her now, and she crawled up and onto her bed, curled her knees to her chest, just as she had done that day when she’d discovered the pink, embroidered handkerchief under her mother’s pillow. Folded neatly, crisply. Her mama’s final words bordered with lilies of white on a field of pink. She’d cried then until she hurt, until she was hollow.
She buried her face in the handkerchief now, heart sobbing. Her mother’s final wish would never happen. The handkerchief, meant to line the pocket of a wedding dress, would remain buried in a box. One and thirty years of age, her life dedicated toher sisters, to others’ happiness, her will chained to her father’s demands—she’d never marry.
She’d wished for love once, had wanted it so badly she’d matched her betrothed with another woman to avoid marrying a man she felt nothing for. Her first match. The one that ended beautifully for the bride and groom. She’d found freedom in it, a chance to try again for herself, to keep looking for the man who would look at her as if she were a queen, the man who would make her the queen of his heart. That freedom had withered at her father’s hands.
But this servitude was nothing compared to what might come if she did not find a way to make another match.
Clearford might be her only chance. She could ignore his foolish ideas because otherwise she’d find her sisters, and herself, married to their father’s cronies before winter’s end.
Chapter Two
Clearford House, London, February 1826
Aproblem was only a bullseye waiting to be conquered. And Samuel Merriweather, Duke of Clearford had a talent for hitting bullseyes. With knife or mind, he rarely missed. Of course, when he did miss, it tended to be by a spectacularly disastrous margin.
Not this time, though.
The matchmaker would arrive any moment. One bullseye hit. His unmarried sisters would find husbands with less effort and fewer complications than heretofore. All it took was entirely divorcing himself from the situation.
The second bullseye had just been hit as well. His own problem—find a wife he could not ruin with a connection to his scandalous family—entirely solved now. Well… soon it would be.
“A widow?” Samuel stared out at the garden in the middle of Grosvenor Square, abandoned at this time of night. “And she’s already aware of the library’s existence?”
“She participates in the monthly book exchanges,” Lottie said. His eldest sister sat straight and prim in a chair in the family drawing room. “She knows well the risks, and she accepts them. A marriage to you would offer no new ones.”
A surprising solution to a problem he’d not known existed eight months ago. His eldest sisters secretly ran a lending library. For erotic books. They’d done damn well hiding it for years, explaining away any scandal that had arisen because of it. Sometimes he felt a glow of pride in them. They were foolhardy but clever. He didn’t particularly want to think ofthemreadingthosebooks. But they seemed no worse for it, and their husbands did not care. Why should he?
Except for one tiny thorn stuck in his hide, radiating pain, promising infection.
If he married, he’d be bringing an innocent woman into a potentially volatile situation. He’d almost been blackmailed into marrying an unsuitable woman last Season because of the library. Who knew how many explosions were planted around him, waiting to go off? He could not ask anyone to risk the sort of infamy that saw one shunned by society.
“It could work,” he said, seeing beyond his sister’s reflection in the glass, past the street, and to the gas-lamp lined garden beyond. Marry a woman whoknew, who already risked scandal? He could have his heir without harming someone else.
“But is it whatyouwant?” Lottie asked.
He blinked to refocus, found his sister’s wavering reflection, the gold of her hair, the roundness of her belly filled with her second child, her sharp, intelligent countenance. Those softer in the reflection. Or softer because of her question?
“You do not have to settle, Clearford.” Lady Templeton sat near the fire, her hands folded neatly in her lap as she regarded him. “You could demand your sisters stop.”
“What use is that?” Samuel asked, each word weary on his tongue. “The damage has been done, the risk of scandal created. They might as well be happy.”
“We’ve been over this, Samuel,” Lottie said. “Youmust be happy as well.”
“I must be married. That is all.” Those words even wearier, heavy like stones.
“You could have married at any time.” Lady Templeton’s blue eyes probed deeper than Samuel wanted them to, and he crossed his arms over his chest to keep her from prying into his heart. “But you’ve put it off. Year after year after year. If it was simply marriage and an heir you were after, it would have been done already.”
True.
He’d been waiting for an arrow to hit the bullseye of his heart. As of yet, no one possessed an aim good enough to even glance off one of his ribs. He could waste no more time being a foolish romantic.
“At least speak with the matchmaker for your own benefit, Clearford,” Lady Templeton said. “You are in more need of her than Felicity. A woman of advanced years will be able to understand a man of advanced years such as yourself.”
