A Scandalous Proposal (27 page)

She rounded on Emily and seized her hands. “If Evan does not contact you shortly, you must go to him.”

Even in midswing of emotion, Emily had to smile at that. “I assure you, if Evan still cares for me, he will seek
me
out.”

Andrea looked thoughtful. “Perhaps. But the Evan sitting in a darkened library at Highgrove is not the same man who left England eight weeks ago. He still has no sight in his right eye, his right arm has little movement and his hand may be permanently crippled. Oh, I know all that would make no difference to you, but I assure you from personal experience, it will to him! When someone who has been whole becomes…damaged, it does something to one's sense of self. It must be even worse for a man who feels he should always be the strong, commanding one, caring for those he loves. If he no longer feels himself capable of that, he may very well not seek you out.” She paused, as if to let Emily absorb the truth of that.

“I see how that might be so,” Emily admitted.

Andrea laughed. “'Tis that, I'm sure. Gentlemen and their silly scruples! Even my Giles, when I told him I intended to end my engagement to Evan, was horrified that I meant to abandon the protection of a husband in possession of all his limbs and entrust myself to one who was, he said, ‘lacking.' Of course,” she added with a devilish twinkle, “after I finished kissing him he decided my marrying
him
might be better, after all. So you see, if Evan does not come to you, you shall have to go to him.”

Go to Evan unbidden? The notion both excited and appalled her. “And if he truly no longer wishes me?”

Andrea shrugged. “A few moments in his company should suffice to establish that. Prepare some excuse to have ready, if you must—you were visiting friends in the neighborhood and stopped by to see how he was getting on, or some such.”

For a moment Emily stared at her, swayed by the intensity of the girl's conviction. Go to Evan unbidden. Could she summon up that much courage?

“He returns to London in a week for my wedding, which—” Andrea flashed her a smile “—if you can finish the dress, will take place in a fortnight. If he's not contacted you before then, I think you should go to him.” As if reading her thoughts, Andrea added softly, “If you love him, you can do it. If you truly want him, you may have to.”

Miss Marlowe gathered her gloves and reticule. “Would you do me one more favor? Would you come to the wedding? Had it not been for the love Evan bears you that made him act so strangely, in my anxiety I might have forced us into a hasty marriage we would have regretted the rest of our lives. Instead, I had the time and confidence to find my Giles. For which incredible gift I can never thank you enough.”

Despite the conflicting emotions battering her, Emily had to smile at life's absurdity: the girl she felt she'd badly wronged seemed to view her as a sort of guardian angel. “If you wish it, I should be honored.”

“Excellent! Since Evan is like a brother to me, you and I must be sisters. Mayhap he will have an ‘interesting announcement' to make at my wedding!”

Grinning at that romantic thought, the young lady took her leave.

 

Emily smiled too, then. Nearly two weeks later she was no longer smiling. She'd received no letters. For the first few days after she knew he'd arrived back in London, her ear had continually listened for the sound of his footsteps approaching her office, her workroom, her parlor. Footsteps that never came.

Andrea's wedding was but a few days away. Surely, after all that had passed between them, he would not meet her for
the first time since the end of his engagement in front of a roomful of strangers. Even if he no longer wanted her for his wife, they might still be friends—mightn't they? Then why, why had he not contacted her?

Sighing, Emily tapped on her sketch pad, not noticing that evening shadowed the room and the noise of the seamstresses had given way to silence, until Francesca came in.

“Why, mistress, sit you here in the darkness, your tea
frio?
Every day this week I find you thus.”

“I've been…sketching and lost track of time.”

After a skeptical glance at the mostly blank paper in front of her mistress, Francesca came over and peered down at Emily. “What is it,
querida,
that sets your mind fluttering like a wild bird without a nest?”

“Nothing, Francesca. I'm a bit tired, I suppose.”

The maid sighed. “Do not worry,
querida.
By the blessed saints, he
will
come for you.”

For two weeks she'd fluctuated between euphoria, hope and doubt. Tears threatened as she replied, “It's been a month since his break with Miss Marlowe. How can you be so certain?”

“His eyes,
querida.
When he was wounded and we tended him, they followed you—yes, even the sound of your voice. Your spirit is in him. He must find you again if he is to be whole.”

Emily wanted so badly to believe that. Trying for a lighter tone, she replied, “‘Eyes', Francesca? He can only see out of one.”

The little maid shook her head and gave her a pitying look. “So…literal, you English. But the master—when he was cut down, his power as dust, he knew better. He was seeing with his heart,
querida.
As you could, if you would but listen and do what it demands.”

Telling Emily she would summon the carriage, the maid went out.

As they journeyed home, during dinner, as she sat heedless over her book that evening, the maid's words whispered to her:
listen to your heart.

One action she had been able to take. With Miss Marlowe's story a powerful reminder that 'twas wrong to marry a man for whom one felt only friendship, she'd turned down Brent's offer. He took the refusal with good grace, saying he hoped she'd change her mind—if someone else didn't declare his.

What did that “someone else” intend? How she wished she knew.

She'd attempted to write to Evan, seizing the excuse of offering condolences on the broken engagement. But every note she began, and she began many, ended shredded and tossed in the fireplace.

Should she go to him as her heart urged? She could hardly imagine the commanding, overbearing man she knew not coming to claim a woman he wanted once he was free to do so. The Evan who'd carried her up to her room that night, who'd begged Lady Auriana to meet him at a country inn, would have come straightaway to London, demanded entry if she tried to turn him away, argued with her to accept his proposal.

He'd said when last they met that he'd never harangue her again. But circumstances were different now. Now they could share together the fullness of intimacy blessed by the legitimacy of marriage.

Unless he no longer wished that.

She recalled the handful of noisy children who, with their mothers, had followed the army's baggage trains. One little lad had begged his papa for a tin soldier like those the other boys had. Finally, when they chanced near a city large enough to have such trifles, his father had bought him one.

At first the child was ecstatic, playing with his new toy all the day and forbidding the other lads to touch it. After a
few days he played with it less and less. One afternoon she came upon it at the stream near their encampment. When she returned it, he thanked her politely, then handed it to his mama without so much as a glance, having apparently little interest in his prize now that it was available whenever he wished.

Had the intensity of the emotion Evan felt for her been based in part on the impossibility of achieving the union he'd sworn he desired? And now that he might at any time claim the prize, he no longer wanted it?

Or was it as Andrea said: wounded, half-blind, he felt himself unworthy, that in honor he could not ask her to bind herself to a man less than he used to be?

Perhaps being wounded
had
changed him. If she'd heard anything at all from him, even a laconic note saying he'd returned to town and would call when his health permitted, she'd feel more confident going to him.

Go—or stay away? Wait—or try to put him out of mind entirely?

With a groan she paced to her bed. How many nights these last two weeks had she sat sleepless by the window, shunning the society affairs she now found stifling, avoiding Natalie's and Francesca's concerned glances, even her design work losing its power to distract?

She must do something soon or go mad.

E
van sat on a bench in his London garden letting the soft sun play on his ravaged face. Such light was beneficial to knitting skin, the doctor said. The bandages were off all but his eye, and the doctor was hopeful, once the scarred skin around it fully healed, the eye might realign and clear enough to restore his sight.

In any event, for the rest of his days he'd carry a scar from cheekbone to brow that gave him the appearance of a West Indies pirate. If only the eye resumed functioning, he'd happily settle for that.

With the fingers of his good arm he laid a letter on the bench beside him, grimacing slightly. Though he was regaining limited use of his weak shoulder, any movement still pained. His right hand was completely useless.

He looked at the letter again and sighed. Ever since the implications of his broken engagement had registered, he'd been battling between action and silence. His first response had been rapture. Emily could now be his with all the solemn legality and permanence she'd always desired. He could make the woman of his dreams his wife in truth.

With his second breath he remembered Brent.
“I couldn't bear to lose her now,”
his friend had said. Having given
them his blessing, what kind of selfish cad would press his own claims at the cost of his friend's heartache?

Still, with every breath Evan had to fight the seductive whisper that said go to her he must. He loved her, had loved her first and longest, and she loved him still.

Or did she? Could not even a pure love eventually collapse under the weight of hopelessness? Perhaps, knowing his union with Andrea was but weeks away, hers had. And when her love fell apart, standing by with a strong shoulder and a sympathetic ear had been Brent. Brent, who had always stood her friend, who'd never forced her to yield to his passion or harangued her to act against her conscience.

“I used to be an honest woman,” she'd whispered, her cheeks wet with tears of shame that first night. Why would she wish to pledge herself to a man who had caused her such pain and humiliation? How could Evan be presumptuous, arrogant enough to think she might?

Only by speaking with her could he know for sure.

“Let nothing stand in your way,”
Andrea had said.

Good advice,
his heart urged. Or was it?

With a sigh he reread the letter. Mr. Manners disclosed that Emily had been reclaimed by her father's family, declared the Duke's heir and awarded a sizable bequest. She had done him the honor of asking him to manage it for her. As a very rich woman, one of the first steps she desired him to take was to pay off the remaining mortgage on the house Evan had given her. Since she now had available sums greater than Evan's own, he saw no reason, the lawyer wrote with a touch of dry wit, to dissuade her from that course.

At first Evan had laughed at the irony, but his humor had swiftly faded. First he'd discovered she outranked him. It now appeared she would be wealthier as well. Why should she want him, a cripple, when every unattached male of good birth in London would be clamoring for her?

Still, he loved her. Should he not at least affirm that and let Emily make her choice?

But he wanted her so badly, he wasn't sure he could present his case without pressuring her. Besides, he'd looked in a mirror. The last thing he wanted was for her to marry him out of pity.

Perhaps if he were to write her…

With scorn he looked down at his still-useless hand. What effrontery possessed him to think he might try to win her back when he couldn't even pen the note?

He'd combed the papers every day and as yet there'd been no announcement of her engagement. He'd see her at Andrea's wedding. Perhaps he should wait, observe her behavior toward Brent and himself, take that as his guide. Besides, being surrounded by a crowd would prevent his succumbing to the temptation to press his suit. But how could he see her at last after so long and be unable to speak his heart?

Damnation, what a miserable, dithering idiot he'd become, he thought, slapping the letter down in disgust.

 

Emily followed Billingsly down the hallway, her heart thudding against her ribs. All during the ride to Portland Square she'd reminded herself of Miss Marlowe who, once she'd met the man she wanted, had not hesitated to do whatever it took to make him hers.

Yet Emily, who prided herself on her independence, had always waited for the men in her life to act—Andrew to approach her father and his, to bid her flee with him; Evan to dictate the course of their relationship. She'd hidden behind memories of her dead husband to deny her growing love for Evan, let shame over mistakes of the past dissuade her from reaching out to correct the future.

Did she have the courage to boldly admit her love and risk the humiliation of a refusal?

“Listen to your heart,”
Francesca urged.

Listening had brought her here, still unsure what she would say to him. If he turned her away, she hadn't even devised some polite excuse for her visit that might cover the embarrassment of rejection.

They halted outside the library door. “He's in the garden just outside, Lady Auriana,” the butler said. “As you requested, I'll not announce you.”

She wiped nervous hands on her skirts. The butler bowed, and she spied the edge of a smile before he walked away. Heavens, did everyone suspect why she was here?

A few steps into the room, she stopped short, attention caught by her landscape hanging over the fireplace. Her anxiety eased a little. Evan must still care something for her to so prominently display the painting in what Billingsly said was his favorite room.

Her pulse accelerated as she spied him. Gathering her courage, she seized the door handles and walked out.

“Put the tea on the bench if you please, Billingsly.”

He'd obviously heard footfalls, but as she advanced from his blind side, hadn't seen who approached.

“Hello, Evan,” she said softly.

His whole body tensed. “Emily?” he breathed, still staring straight ahead.

“Yes.” As she drew closer, her thoughts scattered like leaves in a high wind. She could think of nothing else to say.

Ah, but there was so much to regard. The nasty scar beside his eye, fiery pink but healing. The right shoulder he seemed to keep hunched, his right hand motionless on his lap. His color was good, if pale; his hair luxuriant with the sheen of recovering health and his body as commanding and powerful as she remembered.

The almost overwhelming desire to run to him dissipated a bit as he continued to sit silently, not even glancing at her. She halted uncertainly.

“A-are you well?”

“Yes. Much recovered. Thank you. Please, be seated.”

Andrea had warned he might appear distant, but this was beyond anything worse than she'd expected. Not knowing what else to do, she took a chair beside his bench.

“Andrea tells me you designed her wedding gown.”

“Yes.”

“She's in raptures over it—Mama, too. Something in blue, I believe? A good color for her.”

“Yes, cerulean shows her hair and skin to advantage. I'm glad it pleases her.”

If they uttered any more polite banalities, she'd scream. Every nerve cringed in embarrassment and she felt ready to bolt.

He seemed totally indifferent. Whatever love he'd once felt had apparently fled as swiftly as the descending blade that slashed his face.

The prize no longer sought, now that it was within grasp.

She should gather the tatters of her dignity and go.

If you truly love him, you will do whatever it takes.
Andrea's advice played in her ears.

She'd come this far—she should brazen it out to the end. Baldly tell him why she'd come, be definitively accepted or rejected.

But how to begin? Somehow, after that exchange insipid enough to feature as conversation at morning call, she couldn't just blurt out, “Evan, do you still love me?”

“Did Brent come with you?” Out of the silence, Evan's question startled her.

“N-no. He…he's left London for a time. To tend his horses in Ireland, he said.”

“He generally does this time of year. I expect he'll be back soon. He'll not want to be away from you long.”

“We…we don't see each other very much now.”

He turned slightly toward her. “Don't see—Emily, have you quarreled? I half expected to hear you were engaged.”

“Engaged?”

“Yes. Brent gave me to understand he expected you would soon accept his suit.”

“Brent told you we were about to become betrothed?”

“He certainly hoped so.”

Could that be the reason for this cold, impersonal response? An upsurge of hope coursed through her.

“Evan, I'm not betrothed to Brent. 'Tis true he made me an offer, which to my shame I didn't refuse out of hand.”

“Perhaps you should reconsider. He's a fine man and would make a superior husband. I know he loves you deeply.”

As a reaction, that was hardly encouraging. “I…I had another fine man in mind.”

“I must wish you well, then.”

Her strained nerves frayed to breaking. “Damn and blast, Evan, I meant you!”

He seemed almost to…recoil. Was the thought that distasteful to him? Her confidence, never high, wavered further.

“Why would you wish to marry me?” he asked quietly. “You are beautiful, wealthy, and could have your pick of any unmarried gentleman in London. By the way, congratulations on your inheritance. Manners wrote me you'd paid the mortgage on our—your house in full.” He lifted his chin and stared once more determinedly away from her. “I expect you didn't want even that link remaining to remind you of a past…you'd rather forget.”

“'Tis not that at all! Actually, I had hoped my paying off the debt would at least generate a note from you.”

He smiled, more of a grimace. “As you can doubtless see, my writing skills have deteriorated of late. Emily, I know you once held me in…affection, but I'm not the man I once was.”

In body…or spirit? She had to know. “In what way?” she whispered.

“I should think that was rather obvious.”

“If you are speaking of your scars, those are badges of honor of which any man should be proud. Andrea told me what you've done. You're a hero, Evan.”

He made a scornful noise. “Hardly. I had some small part in bringing down a smuggling operation. Not the stuff of which legends are made.”

“What, then, is a hero? Do you think soldiers in uniform do more? My husband took part in eight battles, was wounded four times and twice mentioned in the dispatches, but never could he boast a battle won by his efforts. He persevered, fought valiantly and perhaps inspired others to fight better, no more.”

“Honoring his commitments and fulfilling his duty,” he paraphrased quietly.

“Exactly. When you left England, you did not think of safety or convenience or self, only of doing what must be done, regardless of risk. That's a hero in my eyes. As for your wounds…I much prefer a live hero to a dead one.”

His face twisted and he turned his head even further from her. His voice, when he finally spoke, was ragged and so low she could barely hear him. “I don't want your pity.”

Pity? Is that what he feared? At last he'd shown some spark of emotion, said something that recalled Andrea's predictions. Emily would soon put that fear to rest.

Assuming she could bring herself to the sticking point before she lost what little nerve she still possessed.

As it had so many months before when she'd steeled herself to invite his illicit offer, her heart started to pound and she felt dizzy.

“Did you not wonder why I'd come to visit? I've something special for you.”

“Indeed,” he replied, falling back into that cool, maddeningly disinterested voice.

“Do you not wish to see it?” Why was he making this so hard? Exasperation pushing her to greater boldness, she leaned over and held out a paper. With her other hand she seized his injured one. “Here, read this.”

For a moment she thought he might use his good hand to snatch the useless one back from her grasp. Instead, slowly, grudgingly, he took the paper, keeping his eyes averted as he flipped it open.

Then he let the paper fall and for the first time looked straight at her, astonishment on his face.

“It…it's a special license. Emily, what in the world…”

“Will you marry me, Evan Mansfield? Be my hero now and forever, for the rest of my days? And I warn you, if you refuse I'm likely to buy the house next door—I'm a wealthy woman now, you know—build a willow cottage by your gate and pine away until you relent.”

The barest wisp of a smile touched his lips. “Emily, that's ridiculous.”