“She’s also my godmother,” Cal said.
“And mine,” Lily said gloomily. “I’ve always hoped she’d turn out to be some kind of fairy godmother, but all she could say to me was that I was fat and should be forced to eat nothing but potatoes boiled in vinegar.”
“What?” Cal exclaimed. “That’s disgusting—and wrong! You are not in the least—”
“Oh, don’t worry, Emm had the perfect response,” Rose said warmly.
“Yes, thank you, Emm,” Lily said. “I was ready to sink until you spoke up.”
“Don’t you dare let her get the better of you, Lily,” Georgiana said fiercely. “She’s not a fairy godmother, she’s a feral one.”
There was a short silence, then they all burst out laughing.
“Stop maligning your relatives and eat up, you disrespectful females,” Cal said a few minutes later. “We don’t want to be late for the theater.”
Who knew that Aunt Agatha would turn out to be the very thing he needed? It should have occurred to him sooner: In the face of a common enemy a disparate group would usually unite. Good old Aunt Agatha.
***
“Has something happened to disturb you?” Emmaline asked Cal that night as they were undressing for bed. “You’ve been very quiet all evening.”
“What do you mean?” He’d done his best to be cheerful and entertaining. He’d thought he’d done quite a good job.
“We’ve had a lovely night—I think you can tell from the conversation in the carriage coming home from the theater how very much the girls and I enjoyed ourselves. It was so thoughtful and kind of you to take us. But you haven’t said a word to me about how it went with your assassin this morning.”
“Oh. That.” He shook his head. He didn’t want to talkabout it. He didn’t want the ugliness of the morning spilling over into his marriage. “It doesn’t matter. Come to bed.”
He made love to her then, using all the skills at his disposal, seeking forgetfulness, oblivion, finding comfort in the warmth of her acceptance, in the sweet response of her body.
But after they’d climaxed and lay spent, exhausted and satisfied, sleep didn’t come—not to Cal, and not to Emmaline; he could tell by her breathing. She lay wrapped around him, their legs intertwined, her cheek resting on his chest, her palm pressed against his heart, one finger caressing him softly. They often fell asleep in that position, but not tonight.
In the hearth the coals glowed and hissed, sending out a soft, dim light. The silence stretched between them.
She murmured, “It sometimes helps to talk, you know. And I really would like to know what happened.”
“You don’t.”
She raised her head and looked at him, her eyes dark and troubled. “Was it really so bad?”
He sighed. “No, I suppose not. It’s just...” He didn’t know why he felt so... He didn’t even have a word for how he felt. He supposed it wouldn’t hurt to tell her. Nobody was injured, after all. Nobody killed.
So he told her about the decision to imprison the women and children as hostages for the assassin. Told her about the tumbril cart and the weeping women and children. And about the young boy carrying a burden too great for his scrawny young shoulders, stiff with pride—and shame.
“But they will be released, won’t they? They won’t be hurt.”
“No, they won’t be hurt.” Not physically. He tried to think of words to explain how he felt. The trouble was he didn’tknowhow he felt. He was a turmoil of contradictory thoughts and feelings.
“Their father did murder your friend and many others.”
“I know and I despise him for it, but... it’s not as simple as it seemed before. When I was hunting him, it was just him and me—clear-cut, straightforward. As it had beenduring the war—you didn’t think about it—there was the enemy shooting at you, so you shot back. Now...”
It was different now, but he couldn’t explain how. Cal lay quiet for a while, trying to gather his thoughts. The fire was dying. He got out of bed and added coal, poking savagely at the embers until he had a bright blaze going.
He slid back into bed, gathered her against him and tried to give words to the jumble of feelings inside him.
“A man’s wife and children should not be punished for what he has done. It’s bad enough during a war, when innocents get caught up, their homes looted and destroyed, their crops ruined, robbed of their livestock, their women despoiled and their children—” He broke off as images came to mind that he’d tried for years to forget. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply.
She hugged him, stroking his skin, pressing herself against him, not seeking anything, not trying to comfort him with empty clichés, not saying anything. She simply listened.
