Something About Emmaline (11 page)

All heads turned at this volley, looking to see how the newcomer in their midst would respond.

Emmaline rose to the challenge. “How right you are, Lady Oxley. It is hard to believe that I am the woman before you. But I can say with all honesty that I would not be here today if it had not been for the extraordinary lengths my dearest, beloved Sedgwick went to, in order to see that I lived.”

“Sedgwick?” Lady Oxley asked. She shot sideways glances of disbelief to her cronies, who all tittered in agreement.

“Yes, my husband,” Emmaline declared as if there could be no doubt to her statement.

Lady Oxley smiled at her allies, rallying her troops. “Are you telling us that Lord Sedgwick is responsible for your miraculous recovery?” She smirked again.

“Quite so.” Again, the truth was such a strong foundation. If Sedgwick hadn’t invented Emmaline, she wouldn’t be there before them. He was all too responsible for her arrival in society.

“Let me guess,” Lady Oxley said, tapping her fan against her thin lips. “It was his dearest devotion that worked this miracle.” This time the titters and snickers were less discreet.

“Exactly,” Emmaline said, the beginnings of a tale creeping up inside her. She glanced at the door again and saw there was still no sign of the gentlemen. Besides, it would only be a small bouncer, the tiniest of lies. Not hardly worth recalling.

At least not in front of Sedgwick.

“Harrumph,” Lady Oxley was sputtering. “Sedgwick, indeed.”

“You see, Lady Oxley,” Emmaline said, ignoring the lady’s disbelief, “up until three months ago, I couldn’t even rise out of bed, I was so weak and ravaged by sudden fevers. Last winter the doctor wrote to Sedgwick to come immediately, for he feared the end was very close.”

Lady Pepperwell gasped.

Emmaline lowered her head and shook it slightly. “Yes, I was very near death’s door.” Perhaps not death’s door, but she’d certainly been in dun territory. Becoming Lady Sedgwick had saved her life. Quite literally.

“What happened?” ventured Lady Pepperwell. Despite Malvina’s assertions that she was poor
ton,
Emmaline thought she was, if anything, a kindly woman with a tender heart.

The kind she had taken advantage of time and time again, she thought. Why was it that this had never bothered her before, but now…

“Yes, whatever did Sedgwick do?” Lady Diana asked, prodding Emmaline out of her reverie.

“S-Sedgwick?” she stammered. “Oh, yes, Sedgwick. He came at once, braving snowdrifts that could have buried him, so he could be at my side. When he arrived, cold and nearly frozen, his fears so clearly etched on his brow, I was
overcome with guilt as to how much my condition had beset him.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she spied one of the younger ladies pulling a handkerchief out and dabbing her eyes.

Emmaline continued, warming to her story, ignoring the fact that she shouldn’t be telling it in the first place. “That night I overheard dear Sedgwick confiding to the doctor that he didn’t know what he would do if I were to die.”

“Perhaps remarry?” Lady Oxley suggested.

“No, I fear not,” Emmaline told her. “You must know the Sedgwick barons are overly cautious when it comes to marriage, but to wed twice?” Emmaline shook her head. “No, I knew he would never marry again. And that was my worst fear. That Sedgwick would carry his love for me to the grave. That he would die without an heir—”

“Well, you know quite well he has an heir,” Lady Lilith sputtered.

“Certainly Hubert would inherit,” Emmaline told her. “But I know Sedgwick longed for his own son.
Several of them
. As much as he trusts and respects Hubert, a man wants
his
own stock to carry on.”
Not some beastly shirttail relation,
was her implication. Ignoring Lady Lilith’s outraged moue, she continued. “So right there and then, I resolved to live, and I told Sedgwick so. He was so taken with my determination that he spent every waking minute caring for me.”

There was another “harrumph” from Lady Oxley, but her once-rapt audience was now paying her little heed.

“He carried me from my bed each morning, insisting that I take fresh air, even if it was just a chair by the window. He ordered delicacies brought from London for me to have
with my tea.” She glanced up shyly at her rapt audience. “He even brought me small bouquets of flowers for my bedside on the days when my health truly prevented me from arising. Yellow ones, for he knows they are my very favorite.”

Now so caught up in her own fiction, Emmaline continued unabashedly, pulling her thread so taut it was hard to believe it didn’t snap under the weight of her lies. “As it was, his heroism, his faith were a tonic to my soul. ‘Emmaline,’ he would say, ‘Emmaline, my dearest Emmaline, live so that I may spend the end of my days with you by my side.’” She managed to force up a tear or two, perfect punctuation for her whopping story. “And at night, he would hold my hand and read to me from my father’s letters, begging me to remember the deep love that had moved my mother to follow my father to Africa. To let her example of dedication and perseverance be my path.” She bowed her head in reverence, praying that her story would hold together.

And so it seemed it did. Several of the ladies were crying openly, no longer worrying about risking Lady Oxley’s ire.

“I can scarcely believe it,” one of them said. “Sedgwick? He’s always been so…so…What I mean to say, Lady Sedgwick, is that your husband has always been a bit of a—”

“Dullard,” Lady Oxley interjected. “Lady Sedgwick, I can’t believe you are going to lead us all to believe that the Baron Sedgwick we all know is a caring and overly compassionate man?”

Emmaline straightened. “Love, Lady Oxley, has a way of bringing to light what is of the utmost importance. And while the baron hasn’t always been the most attentive of
husbands, I can assure you, of late he has come to realize the importance of being a caring and devoted spouse.”

A round of applause broke out behind her. Emmaline spun around to find the doors to the salon now open and the company of gentlemen filling the open space. One of them, the Marquis of Templeton, she thought, was leading the round of approval with enthusiastic clapping.

She didn’t need to guess how long they’d all been standing there listening to her story.

One look at Sedgwick’s furious features told her it had been long enough that she was about to suffer a very fatal reversal to her current state of good health and fortune.

A
lex flinched as first the Marquis of Templeton, then most of the ladies in the room, broke out in applause.

No more stories, he’d told her. Absolutely, no more stories
.

And what had she done? Spun another sticky yarn from which he’d be forced to navigate an escape.

“Lady Sedgwick, I for one applaud your good health, and declare you a most welcome arrival in our midst,” Templeton announced, wiping at his eyes as if they were as filled with the same tears as many of the other ladies exhibited.

Lady Oxley didn’t look like celebrating—not in the least. The woman looked positively murderous.

So besides Emmaline’s ridiculous tale about her miraculous recovery, what else had she been up to? She’d only been alone with the ladies for an hour.

He closed his eyes for a moment.
Only an hour?
It
wouldn’t have surprised him to arrive in the room and find every social convention turned upside down in her unconventional wake.

“I wondered why Sedgwick was so keen to return to the ladies,” the Earl of Oxley was saying. “And now we discover the truth—he fancies his wife.” The man laughed, and was joined by several of the other gentlemen.

Hubert had the nerve to chime in. “Utterly besotted,” he told them. “Just last night he was—”

“Mr. Denford!” Lady Lilith exclaimed, surprising Alex by coming to his rescue. Albeit only for a moment. She continued by saying, “I don’t think that is…Well, there are young ladies present.” She finished her admonishment with an arch of her brow that said more than if she had let her husband finish his lascivious tale.

Lady Oxley obviously took her daughter’s cue and decided to toss some more kindling on the pyre. “Sedgwick, I can’t believe all your wife has been telling us. Such remarkable tales of dedication and loving attention. Why, it seems impossible!”

Alex shot a glance at Emmaline, who sat demurely studying the tips of her slippers, the very epitome of feminine modesty. He knew better.

To his chagrin, Lady Pepperwell spoke up. “It makes me weep to think how your rare demonstration of affection saved this dear girl, Lord Sedgwick. And here I always thought you such a dull, stuffy fellow.” She reached over and patted Emmaline’s hand affectionately, while her watery blue eyes looked about to well up with more tears. “I for one shall laud your dedication to all who will listen.” That comment was shot in Lady Oxley’s direction.

There was a nod of heads from around the room.

Lady Diana spoke up as well. “Indeed, my lord. Constancy in one’s affections is a trait to be admired. Your wife, envied.”

No, no, no!
Alex wanted to bemoan. The last thing he needed was a parade of champions for Emmaline. It was bad enough that Lady Rawlins had taken her under her wing and Simmons held her in favor, but now she was gaining the patronage of some of the most gossipy and influential women in society.

With them on her side, he’d never be rid of her. Not without hiring a team of Covent Garden playwrights to devise a convincing script for her exit.

“That really isn’t necessary,” he told them, forcing out the words to sound as kindly as he could.

“Not necessary? Of course it is,” Lady Pepperwell declared. “If you were willing to walk through snowdrifts last winter to be by her side during our dear Emmaline’s darkest hour, then I, sir, can use my poor influence for your sake, as well as hers.”

“Snowdrifts?” Lord Oxley snorted. “You wouldn’t catch me walking through a snowbank for my wife.”

“Not unless someone had dropped a farthing in it,” the Marquis of Templeton muttered under his breath as he passed by Alex on his way to the sideboard. When he got there, he poured two glasses of port and handed one to Alex. “Fortification, my good man. You look like you need it,” he said quietly.

Meanwhile, Oxley had come to stand behind his betrothed, Miss Mabberly. “Marriage isn’t about all that romantic drivel, Sedgwick. It is about making the right match.” He dropped a meaty paw down on the poor chit’s shoulder and gave her a shake, like one might a favored
hunting hound. The girl looked terrified enough to jump out of her chair and bolt for the door.

“My lord, you’ll find Miranda quite above all that nonsense,” Mr. Mabberly declared. “Got a level head on her shoulders, our gel does.”

“Oh, yes,” her mother added. “Miranda is very much aware of the favor you’ve bestowed upon her, upon all of us with your choice, Lord Oxley.”

The earl postured and preened behind his bride-to-be. “I’d think so. She’s about to join the highest order of society. I’d say that’s enough to keep most wives happy for a good ten or twenty years.”

“Poor chit,” Templeton muttered under his breath.

Alex took a glance at the man beside him. He didn’t know Templeton all that well, for what he’d seen of the fellow hadn’t ever recommended him—a frippery sort, always done in the latest fashions, if not setting the newest craze. His company ensured merriment and a litany of jests and jabs that would be repeated for weeks to come.

But there was nothing merry and light about the man’s words tonight.

And even odder yet, when Alex looked at him again, he found the marquis’ gaze lingering across the room on the unlikely person of Lady Diana Fordham.

The very proper Lady Diana and the outlandish Templeton?

The moment didn’t last long, for the marquis glanced over, as if he had sensed being caught in some secret rite, a deeply private ritual. In that instant, Alex saw the man’s heart in his eyes—a veritable Pandora’s box of regret and sadness and envy.

Envy?
Envy for what?

He soon found out.

Templeton raised his glass and said, “Then perhaps, Lord Oxley, I can give you this advice about marriage—a subject to which I have infinite knowledge and woeful lack of experience from which to draw upon.” The room broke out in polite laughter. “I would suggest following Lord Sedgwick’s example—for devotion to one’s partner never goes out of style.”

“Hear, hear,” everyone repeated as they raised their glasses.

While a few others added their own toasts, Templeton turned to Alex and said in an aside, “Few men find a wife worthy of such devotion, and even fewer still are smart enough to keep her.”

Alex felt himself at a loss amidst the wistful note in Templeton’s words. No, he realized, what the man was offering was advice, to be taken to heart before he suffered some selfsame loss.

Around the room, the toasts and well-wishes flowed toward him, and Alex shifted from one foot to the other under the weight. He didn’t deserve any of this praise, nor the envious and covetous looks from the ladies around the room. Especially when he knew the truth—he wasn’t the man Emmaline had described in such glowing terms.

But as she’d sat there, describing this paragon of husbandly devotion, he’d found himself considering an odd notion.

Was it possible to love a woman so deeply? So utterly?

More so, could he be such a man? Be the man that Emmaline had described with words that rang from the depth of her heart?

He shook his head and set such thoughts aside. It was
nothing more than tomfoolery, ridiculous figments of her imagination, just as Emmaline had always been a figment of his.

But he couldn’t shake the sense of shame that he wasn’t anything like the man Emmaline had described.

No, he was probably more like Oxley than he cared to admit…like most of the men in the room, viewing marriage as nothing more than an alliance between two worthy families.

Except for the Marquis of Templeton. He seemed to possess a rare understanding as to what Emmaline had been saying. Suddenly Alex found himself envying the man. Envying the pain in his eyes, the heart-wrenching desire for a woman he couldn’t have. For wasn’t that what love was? The hope, the longing for something that was just out of reach?

And only a man brave enough to cross that chasm ever discovered the rapture that poets eulogized, that eluded common souls.

He wanted to tell one and all that he was just a regular coward. That it wasn’t in him to have done even a fraction of what Emmaline had credited to him.

Yet there she was, so full of life, living and breathing, and so very much within his grasp. And the magic that she’d spun tonight, in her kiss and in her far-fetched tales, urged him to take that giant leap into the unknown and be that reckless, fearless man.

Much to Alex’s relief, latecomers were announced—Sir Francis and Lady Neeley—cousins of Lady Oxley’s who were obviously forgiven their tardy arrival for the diversion they provided.

Introductions were made all around, and in the resulting
chaos, Alex slanted a glance at Emmaline—only to find her eyes riveted on the arriving baronet and his belaced and fussy wife.

Any of the high color she’d gained from her sortie with Lady Oxley had drained from her face.

Then he looked again at the new arrivals and realized she knew them.

And in turn, they must know her
.

From her deathly pallor, the acquaintance wasn’t something she looked forward to renewing. She rose from her seat and moved slowly to the back of the room, putting as much distance as she could between herself and the Neeleys.

Short of leaping from the window, which right now she looked quite capable of doing.

Demmit, what had he been thinking, bringing her here? Her assurances earlier returned to taunt him.

No one will doubt that I am Lady Sedgwick
.

No one, indeed! Apparently that wasn’t so true. And now, to his horror, her mysterious past was about to be unveiled. In front of Lady Lilith and Hubert, in front of Lady Oxley, in front of the worst gossips in the
ton
.

Yet instead of feeling the kind of panic that came with one’s social demise, oddly enough, all he could feel was that there had to be something he could do to save her.

Not himself, not his position.
Save Emmaline
. In a thrice, he crossed the room and took her hand in his, setting it on his sleeve and taking a casual stance, as if it were the most natural thing for him to do.

Lady Oxley turned to them last. “And cousins, you know Lord Sedgwick, but here is his wife, Lady Sedgwick, so long from town, but now blessedly in our midst,” she said,
though not sounding the least pleased about Emmaline’s arrival. “Lady Sedgwick, may I present my cousins, Sir Francis Neeley, and his dear wife, Lady Neeley.”

Emmaline made a polite curtsy and kept her face demurely tipped toward the floor.

“Now, aren’t you a pretty little thing,” Sir Francis said, coming closer. “Not hard to guess why your husband has kept you out in the country with all this illness nonsense—wants to make sure none of these rakish devils about town catch your eye and make you a cuckold, eh Sedgwick?” The old man laughed in a wheezy voice, with only the earl and a few others joining him.

The few, Alex noted, who had spent most of the evening eyeing Emmaline with just that same rakish glee.

“Now let me get a closer look at you, Lady Sedgwick,” the baronet said. “You look familiar. I declare, have we met? Been to Nottinghamshire of late, have you?”

Emmaline pulled her lips into a polite smile, but all Alex could see was a ripple of panic cross her features.

“No, my lord,” she said. “I don’t see how we could have met. I’ve never been to the northern counties.”

Sir Francis shook his head. “I’m never wrong on these accounts. We have met. Play cards, do you? I never forget anyone I take a few pounds from, or worse yet, those I lose to.” He laughed again. “Perhaps it was at the Shackleford-Demsley house party last winter. Now, there was a full house, easy to miss someone in that crowd.”

“No, it wasn’t me,” Emmaline told him, edging away from Sir Francis’s close inspection. “I fear I haven’t the talent for cards or travel.”

“No talent for cards, eh?” Lord Westly piped in. “Then, madam, you are most welcome at my annual piquet chal
lenge. As long as your devoted husband is willing to put forth your stake.”

Everyone laughed at his joke, as did Emmaline, but Alex knew that what was at stake this moment was much higher.

And while Emmaline’s disavowal and disclaimers might have been enough for most people, not so for Sir Francis. He wasn’t Lady Oxley’s relation for nothing—persistent and dogged.

“Letty,” he said, waving to his wife. “Who does she look like?”

Lady Neeley spared Emmaline a squinting glance and shook her head. “I haven’t the slightest notion.” In an aside to Lady Jarvis, whom she’d taken a seat beside, she said, “My husband thinks everyone looks like someone.”

The assembled company laughed, even Emmaline, though her performance sounded forced to Alex.

“I don’t think that,” Sir Francis protested. “I’m usually correct when I say I’ve met someone, and I swear I’ve met Lady Sedgwick.”

“Oh, bother, Francis,” Lady Neeley declared. “You won’t be fit company until we get to the bottom of this.” She glanced at her friend. “May I?” she extended her hand and Lady Jarvis placed her lorgnette into her palm. Flipping it open, Lady Neeley held it to her eyes and gave Emmaline a long, searching gaze. Her lips pursed together and her brow furrowed, then it was as if she came to some untold conclusion and snapped the glasses shut with a definitive click. “I daresay she—and please, Lady Sedgwick, don’t be offended—bears a passing resemblance to that cheeky woman the Duchess of Cheverton keeps as a companion. The one the Shackleford-Demsley’s took in last winter when the gel was robbed on her way back to rejoin Her
Grace. You remember her, Francis, the one who beat everyone at parmiel and then disappeared so abruptly.”

Sir Francis slapped his knee. “Yes, so she does. Scandalous wench, that Miss Doyle.”

“Not that horrid Miss Doyle,” Lady Jarvis exclaimed. “My sister was taken advantage by that wretched gel three years ago. After Regina afforded her every comfort and consideration, the gel turned around and paid her back by convincing my niece to elope with the neighbor’s
second
son.” She paused, her brows drawn up in high arches. “It was well known she was intended for the heir.” The lady heaved an aggrieved sigh. “And if that wasn’t bad enough, she disappeared quite altogether without so much as an apology. Interfering, wretched woman. She quite ruined my niece with her meddling.”