Page 25 of The Soldier
“I will finish my drink,” she said, taking a seat on the sofa. He pulled up a wing chair, and from the look on her face, surprised his guest by lifting his stocking feet to the coffee table.
He met her eyes with a challenging smile. “We men like to stomp around in our boots almost as much as we like to take our damned boots off at day’s end.”
“We women are of like mind.” She wiggled the bare toes of one foot at him, smiling in the dim light. “But you do not enjoy storms, I think, whereas I do.”
“I do not, but it’s getting better. Slowly.”
“Congratulate yourself on your good timing,” she said, passing her brandy under her nose. “If you’d cut hay today, this storm would have been a nuisance. Now we’ll probably have a few fair days, and your hay can be cut and stowed safely.”
“Good point.” The earl crossed his feet, wondering if this was what Amery and his wife discussed at the end of the day. “If the weather does remain fair, I would like to take Winnie with me into town soon.”
Emmie nodded but pulled her feet up under her, making herself look smaller and even a little defensive.
“Miss Farnum, nobody will treat her badly in my company.”
“They would not dare,” she agreed, but her tone was off. A little flippant or bitter.
“But?” He sipped his drink and tried not to focus on the way candlelight glinted off her hair, which was swept back into a soft, disheveled bun at her nape.
“Winnie will parade around town with you,” she said, an edge to her voice, “and have a grand time as long as you are at her side. Emboldened by your escort and her happy experiences, she will wander there again on her own, and sooner or later, somebody will treat her like the pariah she is.”
“Go on.” He was a bastard, but he hadn’t considered this.
“I wonder, when I watch you and Lord Amery cosseting and fussing over Winnie, if I don’t do her a disservice by allowing such attentions. She is desperate for your regard and affection, your time, and yet she cannot grow to depend on it. Still, her instincts are right: She is deserving of just such care, and had her father been a decent man, she would have had at least some of that from him.”
“But?” The earl watched the emotions play across the lady’s face and saw there was much she wasn’t saying.
“But she cannot grow to rely on such from others,” Emmie said, setting her drink down with a definite clink. “Sooner or later, you will return to London or take a wife, and Winnie will be sent off, to school, to a poor relation, to somewhere. Her future is not that of the legitimate daughter of an earl, and she must learn to rely on herself.”
“As you have?” He watched as she rose and started pacing the room. She crossed her arms and hunched her shoulders, her expression troubled.
“Of course as I have.” She nodded then startled as thunder rumbled even closer. “Winnie deserves the hugs and cuddles and compliments and guidance you give her, but what she deserves and what life will hand her are two different things. She needs to know not every friendly gentleman who offers her a buss on the cheek can be trusted to respect her.”
The first few drops of rain spattered the window, and the earl rose, securing the French doors and moving the candelabra to the mantel. Lightning flashed, two heartbeats went by, then thunder rumbled again.
“Miss Farnum.” He waited until she’d turned to face him at the end of the space in which she paced, then held out her drink to her. “It warms and it steadies the nerves.”
He let her approach him and didn’t speak again until she was taking a sip of her drink, almost finishing it.
“Let us discuss these points you raise, as I think you are largely in a state over nothing.” He paused as a great boom of thunder sounded, the breeze became a whistling wind, and rain began to pelt the windows in angry, slapping sheets. The candles flickered and went out, and in the dark, his companion gave a small, startled, “Yeep.”
“I’ve dropped my drink,” she said, a barely noticeable quaver in her voice. “My apologies, my lord. If you’ll just…”
“Hold still.” He hadn’t meant to be giving a command, exactly. “If you move, you might step on the glass, and it will slice your foot open.” He hoisted her easily against his chest, one arm under her knees, the other around her shoulders. “Arms around my neck,” he growled, but rather than taking her to the door, he moved across the room to sit in a large, overstuffed wing chair.
“You can put me down,” she said, and in his arms, her spine was stiff, her body rigid.
“Soon,” he replied, arranging her legs over the arm of the chair. “This will do for now.”
“It willnotdo,” she protested, but she put her arms around his neck, and St. Just would have sworn he felt her nose graze his collarbone.
As the rain pounded against the windows and the wind rattled the panes, the earl settled them in the chair. His hand moved in slow sweeps along her back, and his chin rested against her temple. He was stealing comfort from her under the guise of protecting her feet; he knew it; she likely knew it, as well.
“It occurs to me,” he said as if she weren’t ensconced in his very lap, “you labor under a misapprehension with regard to my role in Winnie’s life.” He tucked her a little more securely against him and heard her sigh.
“What is your role in Winnie’s life?” She wasn’t fighting him, but neither was she comfortable cuddled up in the chair with him. Well, she shouldn’t be, but he wasn’t about to turn her loose quite yet.
“I hold myself responsible for orphaning her,” he said. “I must be as a parent to her and provide for her in every way a parent would. I owe her this, and to be honest, it… absolves me, somehow, to do it for her.”
