The Trouble With Emma (22 page)

“Yes, I’m ready.” Emma glanced once more at her pages and stood with a sigh. “Good thing I had plenty of practice memorising passages at uni. Otherwise I’d never manage.”

“You can always ad lib, you know.” Her father chuckled. “I daresay not even Mr. Knightley has a patch on you when it comes to clever retorts and sharp rejoinders.”

Chapter 40

The rest of Emma’s week passed in a blur of filming, learning her lines, and – other than the wordless exchange of dialogue pages – assiduously avoiding Mark Knightley.

Which wasn’t easy to do, given his proximity as a member of the production crew. Still, she managed it. She steeled herself to take no notice of his dark blue eyes when he glanced at her and looked away; she ignored his confident stride, and the way his knit shirt subtly delineated his chest muscles. She didn’t listen to the low pitch of his voice when he spoke with Simon and Jacquetta, and remained unmoved if his hand happened to brush against hers when he handed over her pages.

“I think we should film a visit to the attic next week,” Simon mused during Thursday afternoon’s tea break, as Emma returned home from her day at Boz’s bakery. “If it were cleared out, the attic would make an excellent guest room suite.”

“Or a charming bridal chamber,” Jacquetta agreed dreamily.

Emma regarded them in dismay. “It might. But…who’ll clear it all out? There’s masses of stuff up there dating back to God knows when.”

Mark glanced at her. “You can do it. Martine can help.”

“She doesn’t come here on Saturdays,” she sputtered. “And that’s a tremendous lot of work!”

He shrugged. “It’s supposed to rain this weekend. What better way to spend it than clearing out an old attic?” His dark blue eyes gleamed. “You never know what you might find.”

“Dust and cobwebs and mice, most likely,” Martine said as she joined them, and shuddered. “I’ll come over and help you on Saturday morning, Miss Em. I can bring mum too.”

“Oh, no need,” Emma assured her. “I think between the two of us we can just about manage it.” She frowned. “But we’ll need help carting all those boxes of stuff downstairs.”

“I can lend a hand, if you like.” Mark crossed his arms loosely against his chest. “I’ve nothing planned and I’d rather be occupied here in the attic than sat staring at the telly screen in my hotel room all weekend.”

Emma raised her brow. “Oh, you have no plans? How sad. But I suppose being an arrogant, judgmental snob takes its toll eventually. It leaves one without much of a social life.”

Take that, Mr Knightley
.

If he was bothered by her comment, he gave no sign. “Right you are, Miss Bennet. Just as it does for a girl who’s so busy running other people’s lives that she fails dismally at running her own.”

He left Emma standing in the hallway, her lips parted in outrage and quite incapable of finding a suitable retort.

***

On Friday morning, having discovered to her great delight that she wasn’t on the call sheet, Emma dragged Martine along with her up to the attic to have a look round and assess the scope of tomorrow’s scheduled clearing-out.

“Goodness,” she murmured as her gaze swept over the jumble of boxes, old furnishings, lamps, a dressmaker’s dummy, and abandoned birdcages. “What a lot of
stuff
there is up here.”

“I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” Martine agreed at her elbow. She slanted Emma a quick glance. “Good thing Mr Knightley said he’d help us.”

“I really wish he hadn’t,” she retorted. “He’ll just get in the way, like men usually do.”

“Oh, I dunno. I like him.” Martine fiddled with the fringe edging a Victorian lamp, drawing her finger idly through it. “He’s very nice.” She blushed and cast Emma a sidelong glance. “And handsome, too, don’t you think?”

Emma gazed at the girl in surprise. “Mr
Knightley
?”

“Yes.” With a shrug Martine edged past the dressmaker’s dummy and made her way to the tiny window at the far end of the attic. “He always smiles at me, or stops to have a word, and he thanks me whenever I bring him a cup of tea. He’s the nicest,
nicest
man.” She turned back to eye Emma inquiringly. “And he’s a much better catch than Tom, don’t you agree?”

Emma blinked. She was quite unable to come up with a response.

“And I think maybe he likes me too, a bit,” Martine added, and cast a sidelong glance at her. “Why else would he volunteer to come up here –” she wrinkled her nose as she walked into a cobweb and batted it away “– and spend his day off clearing out the attic with us?”

“Because by his own admission, he has nothing better to do,” Emma replied, having regained her senses. “He’s probably composing a whole list of insults to fling at me tomorrow even as we speak. Besides –” she broke off and took a deep breath. “It isn’t common knowledge, but I think he’s involved with someone.” Heaven knew she didn’t want Martine hurt by the cheating sod, as she’d so nearly been.

“Oh. He is? That’s…I didn’t know.” The girl’s face fell. She brightened. “I can ask Tom to help us instead, if you like,” she offered. “I know he’ll do it. We could use another hand. Then you won’t have to put up with Mr Knightley. Since you dislike him so much,” she added.

“No, that’s all right.” Emma sighed. “Of course Tom’s welcome to help us if he likes, but the arrangements are already made. We’ll just have to resign ourselves to sharing close quarters with Mr Knightley tomorrow morning. It simply can’t be helped.”

“No, miss,” the girl agreed, her eyes alight with amusement. “I expect it can’t.”

***

Martine left the attic and Emma remained behind to poke and prod her way through years of accumulated antiques, souvenirs, household castoffs, and rubbish.

So many lives lived…

She found an old perambulator, with a yellowed baby’s pillow edged in lace; several christening gowns, once white but now dingy and grey; a Victorian wicker plant stand; portraits and photographs of previous Litchfield vicars and their families, as well as a box filled with old journals and letters bundled up in frayed and faded ribbon.

Love letters. Christening certificates. Marriage licences and death notices.

The sight of so many once-treasured things, the only evidence of the people who had once owned them, filled Emma with sadness.

One day her things would end up in this attic.

What would she leave behind as her legacy? No baby clothes or marriage certificate, certainly; no tiny christening gown, lovingly stitched of silk and lace; no dried wedding bouquet or photograph album filled with bridal pictures.

Nothing
, she realised with a pang. She’d leave behind nothing but a few books, some clothes, some mementos from the places her family had visited over the years – a kilt from Scotland, a Japanese fan, a handful of German marks – and a couple of scrapbooks she’d done in school, filled with souvenirs and photos of friends she’d since lost touch with.

Mark was right. She was a silly, clueless girl who spent too much of her time running everyone’s lives to the neglect of her own.

Emma sank onto a horsehair divan and began, quietly, to cry.

How stupid she was. How stubborn and vain and misguided. She should have married Jeremy when she had the chance, but instead she’d taken Lady de Byrne’s advice and sent him packing on the eve of their wedding. They might have been married now, and happy. They might have had a child together.

Instead she’d gone and fallen for another woman’s husband.

She heard the creak of a floorboard then, and the clearing of a throat behind her, and with a gasp she dropped the scrapbook from her hands and sprang to her feet.

“Mr Knightley!” she exclaimed, her heart hammering madly.

Chapter 41

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He paused. “I thought I might find you up here.”

She wiped her tears away with the back of her hand and asked crossly, “What do you want?”

For a moment he was silent. Then, “I wanted to find you and apologise.”

“Indeed? And to what do I owe such a momentous event?”

“I had no business saying the things I said to you earlier.”

“Which thing? That I’m silly and clueless? Or that I’m so busy running other people’s lives that I’ve made a m-muck of my own?”

Her throat thickened, but she was damned if she’d let him see her cry again.

“Neither. Both.” Mark paused. “You’re clever and smart. Too clever and smart, sometimes,” he added, and gave her a wry smile. “You figured me out pretty quickly. As to making a muck of things – you have a great many years yet to get it right. You’re hardly in Emily Dickinson territory yet.”

“Perhaps.” She sighed and gave him a watery smile, and sank back down on the divan. “Or perhaps not.”

“None of us know what the future holds, Emma. So – cliché alert, and sorry to sound like a self-help book, but…we need to make every moment count.”

“Yes. We do.” For once, she had no sharp retort or clever rejoinder.

He made his way past the dressmaker’s dummy and eyed her inquiringly. “May I?”

She nodded and made room for him on the divan.

Mark sat down and turned to her. “This is the part where you tell me you’re sorry for calling me an arrogant, judgmental snob.”

“Is it?” She lifted her brow at him. “Very well. I’m sorry for calling you an arrogant, judgmental snob.”

“I don’t think that was remotely sincere.”

Emma smiled. “It wasn’t.”

“Can we, perhaps, start over? I feel as if we got off on the wrong foot.”

“Yes, we did. It
was
the wrong foot – my welly, to be exact – and it was covered in dog poo, if you recall.”

“I can scarcely forget when you remind me at every opportunity.”

“What a ‘how-we-met’ story that would make,” she observed, and laughed. “Can you imagine? ‘And that, children, is how I met your father.’”

Immediately the words came out of her mouth, Emma wished she could snatch them back.

“I can, actually.” His eyes met hers and his expression was serious. “I can imagine it quite easily.”

He leaned forward and brushed the hair back from her face, cupping her cheek in his hand as his lips sought hers.

Despite herself, Emma allowed herself to succumb to the seduction of his mouth for a few glorious, stolen moments. His kiss was so tender, so gentle and sweet and sexy all at once, that she could almost believe he meant it, could almost believe that she meant something to him in return.

But it was all a lie.

She drew back. “Tell me, Mr Knightley,” she asked, her lips still burning from the imprint of his, “is this the part where you tell me you’re married?”

He stared at her in bewilderment. “
What?
”

“I know all about it,” she went on, and pressed her lips together. “So there’s no use denying it.”

“Emma, I don’t know what you’re talking about, or where the hell you got such a ridiculous notion, but I –”

“Yoo-hoo! Mark? Mark, are you up there? We’re ready to shoot the last scene,” Jacquetta called up the stairs.

“We’ll talk about this later, after we wrap for the day,” he told Emma grimly. “You’ve got the wrong end of the stick. I’m
not
, and never have been, married.”

“And you expect me to believe you – why, exactly? I heard those women in the village saying you were married. I
heard
them!”

“What women?” He was genuinely disconcerted. “You obviously misunderstood.”

“Ma-arrk!” Jacquetta caroled again. “I know you’re up there with Emma, you naughty man.”

He let out a short breath. “Damn that woman!” He called back, “I’ll be right down, Jackie.” He turned back to Emma. “I’ll come back this evening and pick you up at seven. We’ll have dinner and we’ll set this mess straight.”

And before she could protest, or tell him to go straight to hell – and to take his wife with him – he stood and made his way back to the stairs.

“Seven,” he said again, quite firmly, and left.

***

“You’ll find Litchfield Inn’s restaurant is quite good,” Mark told Emma as he opened the car door and escorted her up the pavement to the entrance. “I should know – I eat here often enough.”

“My father brought us here for our birthdays when we were small.” She smiled at the memory. “Afters was always a dish of ice cream stuck with sparklers.”

When they were seated with menus in hand, he studied the list of entrées briefly and set the menu aside. “This is where I’d normally make a joke, or say I took the liberty of ordering your ice cream – with sparklers – for dessert.”

“You mean you didn’t?” Emma asked, and raised her brow. “How very disappointing.”

He leaned forward. All traces of amusement were gone from his face. “Look, Emma, I don’t know how you got the idea that I’m married, or who told you such a ludicrous thing, but –”

“Are you ready to order, m’sieu?” the maître-d’ asked.

Mark paused. “Yes. The lady will have –?”

“A glass of white wine,” she supplied.

“– a glass of white, please, and I’ll have a whisky.”

“Very good.” With a nod he departed.

“You were saying?” Emma inquired.

He frowned. “How did this whole thing come about? Where did you hear I was married, and who told you such a thing?”

“I left the bakery on Tuesday, and I was locking the front door when I heard some women talking. They were just around the corner, so they didn’t see me.” She paused. “I heard one of them mention my name.”

“I see. What, exactly, was said?”

Emma felt a rush of humiliation flood over her anew as she remembered the woman’s words.

Has the poor girl any idea at all that he’s married?

“The general consensus,” she said coolly, “was that despite being clever, and possessed of excellent manners, I’m a fool who’s being led astray by a married man.”

His jaw tightened. “What else was said?”

“They said you hadn’t an ounce of shame, and that the two of us were as ‘bold as brass’ to carry on as we have.”

“First of all,” he said firmly, “are you sure they were talking about
us
, specifically? We spent exactly one day together in London, at a museum and a toy store, along with two small boys. That hardly constitutes ‘carrying on’.”