Emma’s gaze wandered toward the garden, toward its very center where, through the trees and bushes, she saw a figure pacing. “There are things you do not know of. Reasons I should not marry him.”
“Murder?” Diana asked.
“No!”
“Bigamy?” Glenna said.
“No!”
“He drowns kittens in the Thames?” Briar held up an invisible bag of yowling kittens.
Heavens, they weren’t yowling. They weren’t there! “No! Nothing like that.” Simply books, unforgettable books.
“Then what?” Briar dropped her arm to her side, hypothetical kittens forgotten.
They stared at her the same way they always had since their mother’s death—needing her to guide them, protect them, teach them. Would she be able to do that if her father married her off, as he surely would do if her matchmaking could not secure the necessary funds?
“Emma.” Diana wrapped her arms around Emma’s waist. “We do not care what others think of you. But we wish you’d given us a chance to stand up for you, to stand with you against them.”
Glenna wrapped her arms around Emma’s neck. “We should not have tricked you into accompanying the duke north. Butwe’d rather face scandal than see you unhappy. You saved someone I loved once. I wish you would let me return the favor.”
Briar joined their hug, and in the place of the shattered thing, something else bloomed—strong and warm and full of light, and for the first time, when Emma peeked into her future, she did not see a life living for her father. She saw a handsome, perpetually harried duke, mornings and midnights tangled in his arms, babies and friends and twelve sisters, each happy as the last.
“Go home,” she said. “I need to think.”
They released her and made for the house, Briar grumbling, “Hopefully, she thinks about the duke’s arse.”
“Briar!” Glenna slapped her shoulder.
“I’ve seen her looking!”
The girls erupted into laughter, and Emma stepped into the garden.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Of course he would be here, leaning against the horse’s backside, hands shoved into pockets, head tilted back so he could stare at the moon.
Emma stared, too, but at him. The long, lean length of him, the thick dark hair, the pale profile, still stubbly in the growing evening gloom. Her sisters had risked scandal to bring them together, and the magnetic need drawing her across the garden whispered—they were right to do so, take something for yourself for once.
Take him.
He stiffened, whipped around, that her only sign she must have made a sound, and before she could take another step, he was at her side, head bowing just a bit to rest against hers, hands catching hers up and squeezing. The perfect miracle of a moment.
Dropped just as quickly as it had coalesced. He stepped back, and distance whooshed between them.
She hated it.
“I want to leave,” she whispered.
“Where?”
“Anywhere. With you. I”—she ventured a shaky step forward—“have been thinking.”
“About?”
“Joining a certain book club. I find myself much in need of an education. And”—she licked her lips—“suddenly without a teacher.”
His hands curled into fists one finger at a time, then he set his steps toward the garden gate.
