Page 33 of The Soldier
“I see you ogling Douglas,” the earl growled from behind where Emmie sat weeding a bed of daisies.
“He is married,” Emmie said, “though his dear Guinevere is not on hand to do the honors, so I find myself willing to appreciate certain of his attributes in her place.”
“He’s honorable, Emmie.” The earl was watching Douglas and Winnie as they tacked across the yard toward the stables, and there was a note in his voice, a warning maybe.
“As am I.” Emmie rose to her feet. “The man is attractive, charming, and kind to Winnie. I like him, and I hope he likes me, as it appears he makes a superb friend. Is there more that needs to be said?”
When he met her gaze again, the earl’s expression bore a hint of humor. “Not on that subject, unless it’s to offer an apology.”
“Accepted.” Emmie nodded but didn’t trust his mood. Did he think she would dally with Lord Amery? Because she’d tolerated a kiss that came so close to improper it was almost worse than improper? But no—he was apparently not regarding it as such—a mere kiss to the foreheadandthe cheek—which rather dauntingly confirmed her sense that whatever the attraction she felt for the earl, he was oblivious to it and indifferent to her as a woman.
“Will you walk with me?” the earl asked, his gaze measuring.
“Are we going to parse your visit to town this morning?”Or perhaps a certain kiss?
“We are, or make a start on it.”
Emmie glanced around and saw the bench under Winnie’s favorite climbing tree. “Come along.” She took him by the hand as Winnie might have, and tugged him over to the shade. “State your piece.”
She arranged her skirts, and when he would have paced before her, captured his hand again and indicated his piece would be said from the place beside her. “I will not watch you march around while you hold forth. Save your energy for your horses.”
“You were right.” He leaned back beside her and stretched out his booted feet before him. “Winnie was not quite ready for a trip to town, though I think some good was accomplished, despite an ignominious retreat.”
“She has very quickly become possessive of you.”
“Possessive of me or of her licorice?”
“You.” Emmie smoothed her skirts again, trying not to wonder when and how she’d become so familiar with a peer of the realm. Maybe letting him kiss her had something to do with it. “You ran into Lady Tosten and Miss Tosten, and Lady Tosten has nothing better to do than lord her rank over the other women in the neighborhood, and of course, she must be the first to make your acquaintance. Winnie, on some level, divined a rival and was not pleased with your abandonment.”
“I was not supposed to greet acquaintances? Winnie will have to get over that.”
“She will, though Winnie has done a lot of getting over in her short life. When she was four, she got over my aunt’s death, and she started wandering the property. We thought she was done with nappies and accidents and so forth by then, but she lost a lot of ground in this regard. Then she got over the old earl’s death, and he doted on her, as did his countess. Then she got over the countess falling so ill. Then she got over her aunts disappearing without a word. Now, just when I thought she was beginning to find her balance, she’s to get over her papa being dead and her home falling into the hands of a stranger. Her first question to Lord Amery was whether he was going to go away, and he had to tell her that yes, he was going to go away, like her mama and papa, the earl, the countess, her aunts, and in time, myself.”
The man beside her was quiet for a long time, staring down his long legs at his boots, his brow knit in thought.
“I am coming to see,” he said, “our Winnie has been at war.”
“How do you mean?” Emmie replied, feeling the stillness in him from deep concentration.
“The hell of the Peninsular campaigns,” the earl informed his boots, “was that Spain itself became the battleground—the old walled towns and cities, the hills and plains.”
Emmie waited while he gathered his thoughts.
“There were French sympathizers at every turn, of course, as a Frenchman held the throne. They were not above using children as spies, decoys, messengers, what have you. But any child—any child of any age—was subject to the impact of the violence. Orphans were everywhere, begging, scavenging, being taken in by this relative only to have to flee to that relative when the next town fell. They became old, canny, and heartbreakingly self-sufficient and necessarily without conscience in their efforts to survive.”
His eyes were so bleak, Emmie could only guess at the horrors he was recalling.
“Winnie has a conscience.”
“She does.” The earl turned his gaze to hers with visible effort. “Thanks to you, she does. But it’s not quite as well developed as her instinct for self-preservation.”
“Or her temper.” Emmie decided to meet honesty with honesty. “When Winnie feels threatened or ridiculed or upset, her first impulse is anger, and it’s a towering, unreasonable, often violent rage, much like a child several years her junior. I hadn’t seen her in a truly mean temper for a few months, but I gather she put on a display for you.”
The earl smiled. “She was brilliant. She kept her powder dry, so to speak, then ambushed me and scampered off while I was still agog with indignation.”
“You can’t let her get away with it.” Emmie made the observation reluctantly. “She must be punished somehow. She cannot be rude to her elders, much less to her betters.”
The earl shook his head. “The Tostens aren’t better than her. On that, I would like to argue, but I cannot. Winnie accurately surmised I’d fallen into the cross hairs of a scheming old biddy, the likes of whom I left London to avoid.”
