Emmaline Westwood shut the door on Lord Ashendon, took three steps toward the staircase, sank onto the steps and leaned against the carved wooden baluster.
That kiss...
She was still trembling inside from it, could still savor the dark, masculine taste of him. The heat that had streaked through her at the touch of his mouth, like rich, liquid lightning...
And oh, afterward, the effort of holding her composure, of making rational conversation in the wake of...that.
Somehow, thank goodness, she had. It was as if there were two Emmaline Westwoods; the rational commonsensical Emm who was somehow able to walk and talk and sound perfectly composed, like a talking doll or one of those automatons she’d seen at a scientific exhibition once.
The other—the foolish, romantical,credulousEmm—was still reeling, dazed at her reaction to what sheknewwas just a simple kiss. The heat from it still echoed deep inside her.
What had made him do it? For a few magical, entrancing moments she’d felt... well,imagined... But no. It was a ridiculously foolish Cinderella imagining, and she’d do well to put that nonsense right out of her mind.
Rich handsome earls didn’t suddenly fall in love withplain spinster schoolteachers. Especially ones they’d met twice. And knew nothing about.
So why had he done it?
Did he imagine she was open to such attentions? Was her respectability not obvious to him? Had she given him some kind of unwitting encouragement?
Did he think because she went out at night by herself, attending political talks, getting involved in—
The brawl.Was that it? Did he think because she’d let herself get involved in such an unladylike contretemps that she was somehow fair game for casual masculine attentions of the improper sort?
And if so, then what did that make his sisters? Was it one rule for daughters of the aristocracy and another for poor unregarded schoolteachers?
Of course it was.
She ought to be insulted, ought to be angry.
Instead, she’d been... entranced. And a small, a very small, rebellious,uncommonsensical,foolishpart of her wanted to stay that way.
She sat at the foot of the stairs for several minutes, hugging the smooth wood of the baluster, reliving and reexamining the kiss, asking herself questions she couldn’t answer—but answering them anyway. Eventually the icy drafts coming from under the door cooled her heated thoughts and returned her to rationality.
And the awareness that she had far more important things to worry about. If Miss Mallard was thinking about retiring—and it seemed as though the rumor was true after all—she’d probably hand the school over to her horrid nephew. Who no doubt would sack them all and sell the school.
That was somethingrealto worry about.
The other was just a kiss. Lord Ashendon probably hadn’t given it another thought. Emm was overreacting, like an affection-deprived, overimaginative spinster. Which was exactly what she was.
She rose and walked quietly up the stairs, looked in on her students as she did each night to check that they wereall in bed and sleeping soundly and then climbed the last narrow flight of stairs to her own small room.
If you didn’t count the basement, Miss Mallard’s Seminary was arranged in order of ascending... austerity, she supposed was the nicest way to put it.
The ground floor of the seminary set the tone of distinction Miss Mallard wanted the school to project. Her office, the parlor where prospective parents were wooed and given tea and biscuits and sometimes a glass of sherry, and the spacious and elegant saloon used mainly for concerts and musical performances—were all on the ground floor, and furnished in the first style of elegance.
The higher you went, however—the classrooms on the next floor up, the boarders’ bedchambers and sitting room above that—the plainer and more functional the surroundings until you reached, by increasingly narrow and steep stairs, the attic where Emm, and the two other teachers who had the misfortune to be without any other income, lodged, along with the servants.
Emm’s room was the smallest. It was cramped, freezing in winter and hot in summer, but she considered herself blessed, partly because it was too small to share, and she prized her privacy, but also because it was one of only two attic rooms with a window. The window was small and square and got grimy very quickly with the smoke from the town below, but it looked out over her own private kingdom—the world beyond Bath.
She loved that window, her own little eyrie, loved looking across the rooftops of Bath to the green rolling hills beyond. Gazing out that small window never failed to lift her spirits, no matter what the weather.
Right now there was no view, in the dark, with rain beating furiously down. She stripped off her gloves, watching the rain form silver rivulets across the glass and hearing it gurgle loudly down the drainpipes.
Lord Ashendon would have walked home in that rain. Good. Serve him right.
No, she didn’t mean that. It was good of him to walk her home. She folded her gloves one inside the other andremembered how he’d taken her hand and tucked it firmly into the crook of his arm.
Men didn’t usually notice her at all. Too old, too tall, too plain, too poor. Practically invisible.
