Page 76 of Reforming Lord Ragsdale
It looked silly on the page, like something you would say to a friend from childhood, or a schoolmate. Shealmost tore up the letter.He will think I have lost all reason to say something so childish, she thought. She stared at the note for a long while, then sighed and tucked it in under the paperweight. She blew out the lamp, took another look around the room, and closed the door on her career as a secretary.
~
Leaving the house on Curzon Street was harder than she could have imagined. Lady Ragsdale cried, the footman looked decidedly forlorn, and even Lasker showed a glimmer of some expression besides patient condescension when he helped her into the hackney, nodded to Tim, and told the driver to take them to the docks. When she looked back, she even thought she saw him dab at his eyes. She may have been mistaken; it was a blustery day, and there were cinders in the air.
“We have so much to look forward to,” she told Tim, who grinned at her.
“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself,” he teased.I suppose I am, she thought, struck by the truth of his observation.Leave it to a little brother to define my own melancholy. If I did not know better, I would accuse him of taking lessons from Lord Ragsdale.
They arrived at Deptford Hard in plenty of time to catch the tide that even affected the oily swells of the Thames, far upstream from the ocean. TheAtlasrode low in the water, full of supplies for the seven-month journey, and more victuals for the convict colony that still needed food from home to take the ragged edge off hunger. She looked closer, frowning. There was no bustle of activity on deck to signify a ship about to sail, no one but the captain, who stared at a long list as he paced the deck.
Tim noticed the strange silence too. “Emma, was it today or tomorrow?”
Before she could add her questions to his, the captainof theAtlasspotted them and came to the railing. “Miss Costello!” he shouted to them on the dock. “Go home. Something has happened, and we cannot sail today.”
“What?” she shouted back, dreading a return to Curzon Street and another round of farewells tomorrow, or the day after.
“The lord inspector died last night. We won’t sail until the end of the week.”
Trust the lord inspector to be so thoughtless, she told herself as they returned to Curzon Street in silence. Now we must go through all this again. She leaned back and drummed her fingers impatiently on the seat, too irritated for rational conversation with Tim.
By the time they were approaching the turn to Curzon Street, she acknowledged the hand of providence in this event. At least she would have time to reclaim the letter from the book room and replace it with something more dignified. That hope crawled up her throat and then flopped back into her stomach as they turned the corner to see the Ragsdale carriage at the front door.
“Heaven and all the saints help me!” she gasped.
Tim looked at her in surprise. “Don’t you want to have a chance to say good-bye to Lord Ragsdale?” he asked. “I know I do.”
“I’m not so sure,” she wailed, wanting to leap from the hackney, run back to the dock, and hide there.
Tim peered at her. “Don’t you like him? After all he’s done for us?”
She nodded, kicking herself for her own folly, and hoping that Lord Ragsdale’s indolence would lead him to avoid the book room altogether, now that she was no longer there. “Of course I do,” she muttered.
“Good,” Tim said. “He told me he likes you.”
Emma groaned and closed her eyes.That word has come back to haunt me, she thought, then stared at her little brother. “He said what?”
“That he liked you,” Tim repeated patiently, with that sly look that brothers reserve for especially dense sisters. “I told him of course he did, and he just laughed.”
Well, you won’t be laughing now, Lord Ragsdale, she thought as she grossly overtipped the jarvey in her confusion.You will think I am such an idiot.
She contemplated sneaking around to the servants’ entrance, but Lasker flung open the door, an actual smile on his face as she started to tiptoe away.
“Miss Costello! You have changed your mind! Lord Ragsdale, can you imagine who has returned?”
To her everlasting chagrin, Lord Ragsdale stood in the doorway too, his mouth open in amazement. “I thought you would be gone by now. . .,” he began.
“I did not know you would return so soon,” she started to tell him at the same time.
Tim laughed and hurried inside. Emma came up the steps slowly. She tried to observe him without being obvious and could see no sign of disgust on his face, or exasperation. There was nothing beyond a deepening of the crease between his eyes, and a certain dullness in his expression she had not noticed when he left. As she watched, he made a visible effort to appear cheerful.
“Change your mind, Emma?” he asked as he held open the door for her. “If it’s any consolation, I think I would have.” He shuddered. “All that water moving up and down! I would probably get calluses from kneeling over a bucket for seven months. Wise of you to reconsider.”
She shook her head. He walked with her down the hall. She glanced at the book-room door, which was closed. His trunk was still at the foot of the stairs.
“Did you just return, my lord?” she asked, her voice hopeful.
“Only just,” he agreed. “But you have not answered my question.”
