‘Freddie.’ Her hand was on his arm again, his name on her lips.
His chest hurt and his eyes were strangely tight. ‘Please do not.’
‘Do not what?’ she asked.
‘Do not feel sorry for me. I have everything I want.’ It wasn’t true. There were lots of things Freddie didn’t have that he wanted, but hewas a man of privilege and to complain was pointless. Worrying about it had never made him able to read either.
‘Now you are being a nitwit.’ That slight furrow between her brows was back, the one that he wanted to smooth away with the pad of his thumb. ‘I am not feeling sorry for you. Knowing you cannot read does not make me think any less of you than I did before.’
‘Partly because you do not think highly of me anyway.’
Her lips curved. ‘This is true.’
Her hand was still on his arm and it was clear she wasn’t about to launch into a protracted pity lecture; something in the pit of his stomach started to relax and words tumbled out of him unheeded. ‘As a child, I would have given anything to be able to read. It would have made my life a lot easier. My aunt seemed to think I was doing it wilfully; she would shut me in my room and refuse to let me eat until I tried harder.’ Emily’s fingers flexed on his arm. ‘But I was trying and so it was a pointless punishment.’
‘Did your brothers not help you?’
‘I am sure they would have if they had been able. They were going through their own issues with our aunt and it became a battle for survival for all of us. We turned in on ourselves rather than help each other, which was exactly what she wanted. It was easier to subdue us if we were divided.’ He glanced at her; her face was so close to his, he could see her individual eyelashes. He turned away, unable to bear the intensity of the moment. ‘When Tobias gained his majority, he sent her to live at one of the dukedom’s family estates, somewhere very far up north that none of us visit. It is a grand residence; she was happy to go but not as thrilled as we were.’
‘When she locked you in your room to make you learn words, what happened when it became obvious that you could not?’
He stared deeper into the room. He wasn’t sure why he was pouring his heart out, telling her things that almost nobody else knewabout him, but now he had started he might as well say everything. ‘Tom, the head gardener at Glanmore House, took pity on me. He managed to sneak into my bedroom when my aunt went to a ball. It was brave of him; he would have been sacked without a reference if he had been caught. He went through the book she wanted me to read and helped me memorise the words of the first chapter. I will never forget that kindness. His help got me through and then I was able to leave for Eton, which was both a blessing and hell at the same time.’
‘You were suspended a few times,’ she said softly. He could hear no condemnation in her voice, although he was fairly sure she had disapproved at the time.
‘At school, I was popular and wealthy enough to pay other boys to do my work for me. Sometimes that worked and sometimes it did not, hence the suspensions. Everyone thinks, or at least I hope everyone thinks, I did not try because I am too lazy and spoilt to do it for myself, but now you know the truth of it.’
Lotte stirred in his lap, not enough to wake but enough to draw attention to Emily’s hand on his arm. She looked down at it for a moment, blinking as if waking from a dream before slowly letting go of him. He missed her touch more than he thought possible.
‘You learned an entire chapter off by heart?’
Freddie nodded. ‘I was very hungry.’ He’d meant it as a light-hearted comment, but he could see from the look on her face that she saw no humour in the situation; his heart twisted at the sympathy he could see. ‘Everything is fine now. I am a grown man. Nobody has locked me in a room for many years and if they did, I am fairly confident I could break the door down.’ He smiled, desperate to return to normal, to defuse the tension growing between them. He wanted her to see him as a man, not as someone to be pitied. ‘Really, there is no reason to look so upset.’
He was not what she would have predicted. ‘I have been as bad as your aunt and I am utterly ashamed of myself. I am very sorry, Freddie.’
A shocked laugh burst out of him. ‘I really do not see how you have deduced such a thing.’
Emily did not smile; her skin was pale, her lips twisted as if she might cry. ‘I thought that you chose not to learn. I thought that you were deliberately wasting your opportunities, opportunities I will never get because I am a woman, and all this time… I truly am sorry.’
This was not what he wanted. He did not want to taint their relationship, such as it was, with her regret. ‘I enjoy it when we cross words,’ he told her.
‘You do?’
‘Of course. It is the highlight of my day when I best you.’
She raised an eyebrow, sadness replaced with dry amusement. ‘You do not get many good days then.’
‘Oh, come now. I’ve been making a tally of each bout we have and I am very much the champion.’
She was smiling widely now, her eyes alight with humour. He’d always adored the small frown she got between her eyebrows when he was teasing her, but this expression, full of joy, lit something within him.
‘What is the score?’ she asked.
‘It is five hundred and thirty-six to me, three hundred and twelve to you.’
She flung back her head and laughed. Freddie became transfixed by the length of her throat; the skin of her neck was becoming an obsession for him, which seemed to be getting stronger with every moment spent in her company.
‘We have argued nearly eight hundred and fifty times?’
