Run to her, that was what his legs demanded he do. Run to her and—his arms added—fold her up in an embrace, never let her go, demand she tell him everything about the father who hollowed her out, about the threats hovering over her head held aloft only by the thinnest thread.
Instead, he sat and wrote.
And then he shoved his arms into his greatcoat and stuffed his hat on his head as he swung into the entry hall, his boots slapping against the marble floors. “Jack!” he bellowed when the footman didn’t magically appear without being summoned.
“What do you need Jack for?” Juney jolted down the stairs and stopped just before him, pointed chin tilted up. “Mr. Jacobs needed him for something upstairs.” Gertrude and Felicity descended behind her. They wore their spencers and bonnets and walking boots.
“Where are the lot of you off to?” Samuel grumbled.
“Across the square to visit with the Blackwood sisters,” Gertrude said. “Where are you off to?”
He handed them the letter folded tight in the palm of his hand. “Deliver this. To Lady Emma. Please? And don’t read it!” Hell, that sounded suspicious. He scratched the back of his neck and swung for the door. “It’s about Felicity’s potential match.”
Felicity took the epistle, one eyebrow raised. “Of course.”
“I’m insulted you think we’d read it.” Juney snorted.
He allowed himself a breath to look at them altogether in one place, bright and smiling and beautiful. Indignant, too, but he loved that just as much. Everything he did, he did for them andto mitigate the damage their unconventional education might confer on someone else.
He hugged them, wrapping his arms around them all, squeezing them tight.
They wriggled away.
“You crushed my bonnet,” Gertrude said, righting it.
“You crushed my lungs.” Felicity cinched her waist with her hands and heaved a breath at the ceiling.
Juney grinned wide. “Are you in need of hugs, Brother?”
“I’m in need of luck.” He opened the door, stepped into the day and into his blank future. “I’m off to ask for Lady Huxley’s hand in marriage.”
Emma’s entire body buzzed. She dropped to the bed on unsteady legs, the letter, soaked in the ink from both their hands on both sides, held loosely between tingling fingers. No more letters. Not after this one. She’d speed up her attempts to find Felicity a husband and leave as soon as possible. She folded the letter and threw it on top of her trunk. Then she dove for it and opened it once more, read it once more, letting gardens grow in her chest, then die.
Dearest Emma,
Let me call you that once and never again. Hate me for it. Perhaps hating me will make it easier for you, and that is my sole wish. You have other reasons to think ill of me. I think ill of myself. I marry under circumstances beyond my control.
The next three words were scratched out, though she could still read them—If I could choose. She lingered on them awhile, rubbing her thumb over the spiky ups and downs of his handwriting before moving on.
I will write to your father, for your sake, not his, and I will give him whatever he asks. And to you, I give the silence you demand.
I must say one more thing before that moment—your worth is greater than any jewel or vein of gold. The friendship your sisters have gifted my own, the moments you and I have shared. We must never talk of them, but I do not wish to forget them. I promised to do so, but I cannot, Emma. I cannot. They are treasures I will greedily hoard till my last breath. Everything I do is to protect those I admire and love, and I count you and your sisters in that group now.
I will never speak of my treasures again but to say this one final thing. I tried not to write it earlier, but it seems I must write it.
If I were free to choose, I would choose you.
She folded it again, knelt beside her trunk, and nestled it deep within, hidden, but there all the same. That’s the way she would remember this thing with Samuel Merriweather. No one would ever know of it; she would keep it as unknown as a shameful secret. But loneliness could never take her now. Not entirely. Not when she could hold the paper stained with his ink and dream of the day, the hour, she’d been loved.
Chapter Thirteen
Samuel didn’t even make it to Lady Huxley’s doorway. A moon-scented wind no one felt but him had drifted with him all the way to Cheapside and pushed him into Frederick’s Coffee House. He’d entered like an invading force and stomped right to his usual table near the back, growling his order at the poor maid who dashed after him.
The coffee wasn’t nearly strong enough, so when the maid returned, he leaned in low. “Whisky, please.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “This is not a pub.”
“I know Lord Devon keeps some about.” The coffeehouse’s owner was a duke’s second son, and he and Samuel had exchanged a word or two over the years. “For special occasions. I’m about to become engaged. That’s special, isn’t it?”
