Page 42 of The Soldier
But what about you, the earl wanted to ask. He honestly could not tell if she was angry with him for contemplating this journey, or relieved or indifferent or… what?
“I will think about it,” the earl said, his eyes on Emmie. She’d been keeping her distance from him all week, and he’d been content to let her. They were together at meals, and he frequently crossed paths with Winnie during the day, and hence, with her cousin. What he had not sought—had not felt welcome to seek—was privacy with Emmie.
***
After the earl’s disconcerting announcement at dinner, Emmie successfully eluded him for the rest of the evening. She should have known her efforts were doomed. He breached all protocol that evening and knocked on her bedroom door once the house was quiet.
“My lord?” She opened the door halfway but did not invite him in.
“I’d like a word with you, if you’ve the time?”
“In the library?”
“This won’t take long,” he said, holding his ground. She took the hint and stepped back, closing the door behind him. When he turned to face her, Emmie saw his green eyes go wide at the sight of her hair loose around her shoulders. Down and unbound. Not braided, bunned, or otherwise confined.
“You were brushing your hair,” he guessed. “Which means you were almost ready for bed. I apologize for intruding.” He wandered to her vanity and picked up a brush inlaid with ivory.
“It was a gift from the old earl,” she said, watching him fingering her belongings. He ran his thumbnail down the teeth of her comb and picked up a blue ribbon coiled in a tray of hairpins.
“I have been considering how best to apologize to you,” he said, winding the ribbon around his finger, “but I’m not sure exactly what label to put on my transgression.”
Call it a kiss, Emmie silently rejoined.
“And was an apology the purpose of this conversation?” she asked, not knowing where in the room to put herself. She wasn’t about to sit on the bed, and not on the fainting couch by the cold hearth either. She also didn’t want to sit at her vanity, not with him standing there, acquainting his big, tanned hands with her belongings.
“I’m not just here to apologize.” He smiled a slow, lazy smile at her. Not one of his company smiles, not a smile he’d give to Winnie or Lord Amery either. “Come sit, Emmie.” He patted the low back of the chair at her vanity. “You are uneasy, wondering when I’ll say something uncouth or alienate another neighbor. I regret that.” He patted the back of the chair again, and on dragging feet, Emmie crossed the room.
She seated herself and expected the earl to take the end of the fainting couch or to slouch against the mantel. He caught her completely off guard by standing behind her and drawing her hair over her shoulders.
“I miss doing this for my sisters,” he said, running the brush down the length of her hair, “and even for Her Grace when I was very young.”
“She raised you?” Emmie asked, knowing she should grab the brush from him.
“From the age of five on. You have utterly glorious hair. Winnie will be the envy of her peers if she ends up with hair like this.” He drew a fat coil up to his nose and inhaled, then let it drop and resumed his brushing.
“You should not be doing this,” Emmie said, but even that weak admonition was an effort. “I should not be letting you do this.”
“I interrupted you. It’s only fair I should perform the task I disturbed. Besides, I wanted to talk to you about this trip Douglas has proposed.”
Emmie rolled her eyes. “The one he proposed at the dinner table. In front of Winnie. What was he thinking?”
“He was thinking”—the earl kept up a slow, steady sweep of the brush—“to alert you to the possibility and to give you a chance to comment on it. But you did not.”
“I said something.” Emmie frowned, trying to recall what. Her common sense told her she needed breathing room—right this moment she needed breathing room, and in the days and weeks to come. She’d been trying to keep her distance from him, to avoid the near occasion of sin, but she couldn’t keep him from her thoughts if he was always underfoot.
“You said nothing that told me what you think of the idea,” he remonstrated. “One braid or two?”
“One. You should do as you please,” she said, trying to rouse her brain to focus on the conversation.
“I hadn’t planned on traveling south again until spring, perhaps when Gayle and Anna’s child has arrived.” He fell silent when the brush found a knot in the heavy abundance of her hair.
“So why go now?” Emmie asked when she ought to be telling him to go and stay away until spring.
“I’m not sure.” He eased the brush through the knot. “I miss my family, for one thing. I didn’t think I would. I spent much of the spring in Westhaven’s household, and I saw a fair amount of Her Grace and my father then, too.”
“But not your sisters, and you have yet to meet Rose, and your father is recovering from a heart seizure.”
“He is. Easily, if my brothers’ missives can be trusted. But what of Winnie? She is my family now, too, and I won’t go if you think it would upset her too much. She’s had a great deal of upheaval in her life, and I would not add to it.”
