Page 43 of Reforming Lord Ragsdale
It was a quiet question, coming almost from nowhere, so wrapped up in her own thoughts was she. Emma knew she did not have to answer it, but as she looked at Lord Ragsdale again, took in his seriousness where earlier there had only been a certain irritating vapidity, she felt that she owed him an answer. She reined in the mare and turned to face him.
“I am thinking, sir, that I would like to be your friend.”
The impudence of her words caught her breath away,Emma, you nincompoop, she scolded herself as Lord Ragsdale stared at her.You’re hardly in a position to recommend yourself to a marquess. When will you ever learn to keep your mouth shut?
“I ... I’m sorry,” she apologized when he continued to say nothing. “That was probably not good form, my lord. Forgive it.”
I will die of embarrassment if he just stares at me, she thought, her mind in a panic now.Suppose he turns his back and rides ahead? Or worse yet, makes me dismount and get in the carriage with the others and that witch Acton?“I’m sorry,” she mumbled again.
“Well, I’m not,” Lord Ragsdale said. “Emma, let’s shake on this. It’s nice to have a friend.”
She looked at him in amazement, well aware that her face was flaming red. He was holding out his hand to her and sidling his horse next to the mare. Instinctively, she held out her hand. They shook hands, Emma holding her breath and looking him in the eye. She took a deep breath then and plunged ahead. “Since we are resolved to be friends, my lord, you can rest assured that no matter what you tell me about you and your father, I will not judge.”
He smiled, and some of the ravaged look left his face. “You will not dare, as my friend, will you?” he murmured. “Let us ride ahead a little.” He put spurs to his hunter, and she followed just as nimbly.
When they were a good distance from the carriage, he slowed his horse, then rested his leg across the saddle as they sauntered along. “As a second son, I was supposed to embrace an army career. All that changed when Claude died. After Harrow, I found myself at Brasenose.” He sighed. “I was not a good student. The warden remembers me well and probably is not suffering cousin Robert Claridge any better than he did me.”
“Did your papa rake you down and rail on?” she asked. “I know mine would have.”
He shook his head. “Papa was much too kind to do that,” he replied.
I wonder if that was such a kindness, she thought.Sometimes nothing says love like a really good brawl between fathers and sons, Emma thought, thinking of some memorable rows.I wonder if your father was as good a man as you think, she considered, then tucked the thought away. Surely Lord Ragsdale knew his own father better than she, who had never met the man.
“He would come to Oxford and sigh over me and remind me that the family was depending on me,” the marquess said. “He was right, of course.”
“My lord, did you begin to drink and wench then?” she asked suddenly.
He was silent a moment, reflecting on her quietly spoken question. “I suppose I did,” he said slowly. “Of course, it seems as though I have always engaged in too much gin and the petticoat line.” He looked at her without a blush. “At least I do not gamble too.”
She laughed. He joined in briefly, then put his leg back into the stirrup and cantered ahead. Again she followed.
“Papa commanded the East Anglia regiment, and they were called up during the ’98,” he continued. “I had always wanted an army career, and I badgered Papa to free me from Brasenose’s environs. He did, finally, and I joined him in Cork. Oh, Emma.”
She did not disturb the silence that followed, because she found herself forced back into the ’98 herself. She was fifteen then, almost sixteen, and she remembered staying indoors when ragged mobs or uniformed soldiers passed the estate, the one slouching on the prowl, the other marching smartly. And Papa would bang on the dinner table and shake a finger at her brothers, warning them of the folly in getting involved in a quarrel that was not theirs.And so we did not, she thought,and see where it got us. Mama and Tom are dead, and I do not know where the rest of you are.She looked at the marquess and knew that sooner or later, he would ask the inevitable question.
“Was your family involved, Emma?”
She shook her head, relieved she did not have to lie yet. “We were not, for all that we lived not far from Ennisworthy and ... and Vinegar Hill.”
“Dreadful place,” he commented. “How did you not get involved?”
She stared straight ahead. “My father was a Protestant landowner, my lord. It was not our fight.”
“Truly, Emma?” he asked quietly.
“Truly, sir.” It was right enough. If he did not know anymore about Ireland than Vinegar Hill, he would never come up with another connection, and she would not have to relive anything more, beyond that summer of 1798. She was afraid to look at him and chose instead to go on the attack. “But we were talking of you, my lord. Were you glad enough to be in the army at last?”
He shook his head, then motioned his horse off the road. She followed, wondering what he was doing. He dismounted then and helped her down. “Let’s sit here, Emma,” he said. “When the carriage arrives, we can wave them on.”
She was glad enough to dismount and only hoped that she did not grimace as she walked with him to the tree.
“A little stiff, are we?” he asked, a touch of humor in his voice.
“I haven’t ridden since 1803,” she said, and then wished she had not.
“Now, why does that year ring a bell?” he asked, more to himself than to her.
Emma held her breath.
