Emma threw the useless serviette down. “I was not brought here to match him, and”—her gaze whipped to Rosalie’s—“how do you know I’m a matchmaker?”
Rosalie shrugged. “The Merriweather sisters told me. I do not mind, except you seem to be rather bad at it, but”—she chuckled—“that is perfectly fine considering the duke used to think himself something similar yet proved bad at it as well. Do you enjoy sharing a pod with the duke?”
“Pod?” The conversation had rolled like a child’s ball into a thicket, and Emma could not follow.
“You’re a pea, my dear. And so is Clearford.”
“Ah.” Why was it so hot in here? “He proposed to you, though?”
“Yes. And that’s precisely what it was. A proposal. Nothing romantic about it. Not that I want romance. In fact, I would have preferred it had he shown up and offered a happily practical match. But”—she chuckled again—“that is not what happened. Here. Let me show you.”
“No, no! Do not. It’s not necessary.”
“You’ll laugh as hard as I did, dear. Watch.” Rosalie jumped up from her chair and strode to the door. She bolted outside, closed the door behind her, then knocked from the outside.
When Emma did not answer, she stuck her head through. “Tell me to come in!” She disappeared behind the slammed door. Two knocks came like harbingers of doom.
“Come in,” Emma said, careful to keep the tremble from her voice.
The door swung open, and Rosalie strode in, hands clasped behind her back. She made a deep, tight bow that almost folded her in half. Then she stood up tall, lips pressed flat, and said in a deep, serious voice, “Lady Huxley. I do not think we should delay this any further. If you are willing to marry me, I am willing to marry you.”
“No,” Emma gasped, her hands flying up to cover her mouth. The man had poetry in his soul, and that’s what he’d said? “What did he… when you rejected him, how—”
“He gave a tight nod, spun on his toe, and left.” Rosalie retook her seat across from Emma in a flurry of skirts. “He was so controlled, yet at the same time so stiff and unhappy. I’m too clever to marry myself to a man like that. Perhaps if he expressed his emotion easily, naturally, I could entertain him. But he bottles it up so tightly that it fairly explodes. I cannot condone it.”
“I cannot contradict you. He should have been nicer, offered a compliment.” Emma’s bones had become flower stems—light and airy and green with spring.
“Even then I would not have accepted him. I think he hopes for love, and I cannot give him that.”
“Why do you think he wants that?” Even to herself, her words sounded small.
“All his sisters are disgustingly enamored of their husbands. Lady Helston… there’s a question there… but her husband isdoting, and she is happy, so perhaps it does not matter. And it is what his sisters wish for him as well. They speak of it often. They have seemed unhappy about him courting me.”
“Oh, I am sure they were not.”
Rosalie waved her hand. “I am not offended. What he wants has nothing to do with me, and what I want has nothing to do with him. Do not some of the matches you try to make work out that way? An amicable parting of ways?”
“I… no. The matches I’ve made do not get so far if there is to be a parting.” Except the times she’d tried love matches. What failures.
“Well, now you have seen something new. But do not pity me. I’m pleased I have a new friend.” She reached for Emma’s hand and squeezed it. “I do hope Clearford finds what he’s looking for, who he is looking for. His requirements are rather particular.” She stared into the fire, then shook off whatever she saw there, and grinned brightly at Emma. “But do say you’ll join our next meeting. I’ll share the book we’re discussing with you. I’ve already consumed it. Two days was all it took. I have it here.”
She dragged her overly large reticule out from between her leg and the chair arm, opened it, and produced a small, blue book. She shoved it toward Emma, and when Emma did not immediately snap it up, Rosalie shook it. “Come on, then. It won’t bite.”
Emma took it and ran her thumb down the gilt lettering on the spine. “The Duke’s Garden?” She tried to imagine Clearford dressed as a gardener, digging in the dirt.
“Lousy title, wonderful tale. You see, the garden is not a plot of earth. It’s that place between a lady’s legs.”
Clearford dressed in nothing, stepping between legs,her legswith a mole just above the left knee, and when he discovered it, he dragged the pad of his thumb—
Emma dropped the book to the table and jumped to her feet. She paced to the windows, fanning her cheeks.
“Surely,” Lady Huxley said with calm hesitation, “you are not unaware of what happens between men and women. You are unmarried, but you are no green girl.”
“I am aware,” Emma snapped. “But I have not… I have never. I am a spinster at one and thirty. I know, but I do notknow, and I am notsupposedto know.”
The rustle of skirts. From the corner of her vision, Rosalie rose and took two cautious steps. “But don’t you want to know? Even if it is merely an intellectual knowledge?”
Did she? She’d never questioned not knowing. It was simply the way of the world. Yet she had been opening Aunt Georgie’s book, reading a sentence at a time, holding her breath as the young woman learned about her body, as the young man showed her…
