In spite of everything, Emilia’s nerves began to settle at his calm demeanor. She took up the cue again and made her shot, managing a glancing tap on the red ball.
“Better.” He circled the room, eying the ivory balls before leaning down to line up his own shot. He lowered himself to the table unhurriedly, those bare forearms flexing in the light of the oil lamps burning above him.
Emilia looked away, fixing her gaze on the cabinet at the far end of the room. It waswrongto find her employer so attractive. She’d mostly avoided thinking about it by avoiding him, but now she found that tactic had weakened her resistance, not bolstered it. “Something happened today,” she began, telling herself that the sooner she got this over with, the better. “In Bond Street.”
Silence, then the soft tap of his cue against ivory. The unmarked white ball streaked into the pocket by her hip.
“Two,” he said.
Emilia nodded, fishing out the ball and getting ready for her own shot.
“Rest more of your weight on the table,” he said. Emilia glanced up in surprise. “You’re standing stiffly away from it,” he explained. “Let your shoulders relax.”
“Oh.” She smiled awkwardly and adjusted. “It’s been a very long time since I played.”
“Who taught you?”
“My grandfather.” She squinted one eye, peering along the length of the cue. “He had a footstool for me to stand on so I could reach the table. That’s how long ago it was.” Carefully she took the shot, just barely missing.
“I find billiards peaceful.” He circled the table, lining up his next shot. “No one to antagonize, nothing to argue, merely a test of your ability to calculate angles and forces. It requires a clear, calm mind.”
“My grandfather liked the solitude of it. I fancy it was his retreat from... disagreeable things.”
Dashwood glanced up. His pose was languid, angled toward the table, the cue very still in his hands. “What sort of disagreeable things?” He took his shot, and again the ball found the pocket.
Our family,she thought. “My grandmother was from a prominent family, and preferred London society. My grandfather preferred the country. He was a great sportsman, very fond of the outdoors. There were... disagreements.”
She didn’t add that the disagreements had crossed generations; her father and her uncle had taken after their mother and become rakish bucks of theton. She didn’t mention that when her own mother died, her father had deposited her in Kent with her grandfather and gone back to those carousing ways. And she certainly didn’t mention the appalling scheme Papa and Uncle John had cooked up to benefit their mate and fellow rake, Emmett Fitchley.
“So they lived separate lives?”
“Largely,” said Emilia. “I spent many years with my grandfather in Kent. My grandmother was rarely there. She died in London, and my grandfather said—” She stopped abruptly.
He lifted his brows in question, a faint smile on his face. It was hard not to smile back at him, and here in this quiet room, just the two of them in a golden pool of light, Emilia succumbed. “He said now she would have no choice but to spend eternity in Kent,” she whispered. “In the family crypt.”
Grandpapa had found that oddly amusing. Looking back, Emilia wondered if Grandmother hadn’t done something scandalous or unpardonable, off in London by herself all those years, and Grandpapa had buried her in Kent to spite her long dislike of the place.
Dashwood grinned. “We all get our just desserts in the end, hmm?”
She grinned back. “Perhaps.”
He stepped away from the table. “What happened today?”
Emilia came forward and studied the lie of the ball. He was right; she felt much calmer now. “I saw someone I knew,” she said, keeping her eyes on her ball and away from him, standing with his hands clasped on his cue, his white shirtsleeves vivid in the shadows. “Years ago.” She paused, then made a shot, pursing her lips when it also went wide. “It was not a cordial meeting, and I fear he may spread gossip about me, but worse than that, he saw Charlotte.”
Silence.
“She behaved perfectly,” Emilia assured him. “But he isn’t a well-mannered person, and I fear... I fear he was too interested in her. I didn’t introduce them, nor tell him her name, but he’s a—”
“Scoundrel?” he suggested when she stopped.
Parker-Lloyd was a liar and a cheat who liked to make women feel small and powerless to resist whatever he wanted to inflict upon them, be it crude advances or petty slights. Even worse, he was wealthy and had aristocratic friends, so no one ever challenged him for it.
“Something like that,” she answered.
Dashwood leaned down and made his own shot, potting her ball again. “Who is he?”
“Geoffrey Parker-Lloyd.” Emilia was so relieved to have got the story out, she just told him.
