Page 31 of A Touch Wicked
“I see,” Miss Dumont replied. “You are reminded that I am not a lady, but a worker. That even female workers seek the right to decide on the future of this country. Perhaps you don’t know this, my lord, but suffrage is not fought for at the whims of privileged gentlewomen. It is women like me who are arrested violently at the hands of men who seek to subjugate them, and women like your sister who give us the means to fight.”
James stared at her, uncertain how to respond to such a passionate defense of suffrage, of her own place in society. Britain, despite its technological progress, still suffered under an outdated class system. Those fortunate enough to rise above their circumstances were still regarded with disdain by aristocrats who eschewed social mobility in favor of a crumbling status quo.
James had thought shamefully little of how difficult it must have been for women in all this, how limited their options were. Miss Dumont had thrust a book at him in an attempt to teach him a lesson, and what did he do with it?
He hid it in a drawer.
Because he couldn’t look at any story involving a masked woman, and because he didn’t wish to consider the message it might have.
And that message was this: he had been so busy avoiding the pieces of his broken heart that he didn’t stop to think of what reason Selene could have had to shatter it.
Chapter 17
At his silence, Emma flushed. She couldn’t keep doing that — conversing with James as if they were still in that bedchamber at the Masquerade.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t speak to you so informally.”
“No,” James said politely. “The fault lies with me, Miss Dumont. My sister has brought me enough pamphlets and essays that I have no excuse. Especially since she writes so many of them herself.”
Emma cleared her throat. “We, my lord. We write them. I’m afraid much of my role as secretary is, for the most part, a public front.”
Of course, Emma still organized Alexandra’s social calendar — a task which her good friend found unnecessary. But Emma continued secretarial and lady’s maid duties because she didn't wish to take advantage of the Greys’ hospitality.
Theirs was a strange arrangement, but Alexandra was known for being an eccentric. Some found her oddities charming, but Emma had long suspected her friend’s writing accounted for her lack of marriage proposals. Men simply did not like what they couldn’t understand.
James sat back with a slow, lovely smile. “So youarethe infamous Marie Christine. I asked my sister once and she lied to me.” Then he laughed. “Too well, in fact. Should I be concerned?”
“Oh, she’s only a little dishonest.” She held out her thumb and forefinger. “A tiny bit. Do you wish to sack me?”
“Come now, Miss Dumont. You have to know that if I sacked you, my sister would no doubt choose her revenge carefully. Poison, perhaps.” Emma couldn’t help but grin, until he added, “If we’re being honest with each other, you might as well out with everything. Did she fabricate your reference from the Duke of Southampton’s family?”
Now Emma immediately sobered. “Ah, no. That was real.”
Oh, how tempted she was to tell him everything about how she got that reference. It would mean admitting to her duplicitous nature, a quality she no doubt inherited from the Duke of Southampton.
Her father experienced that firsthand.
After Emma’s mother became ill, he’d no longer visited. I, too, might become ill, Marie,her father had said.And what if I pass it onto my children? My heir? Send for me when you’re well again and I will drop everything.
Emma suspected it wasn’t contracting the illness he feared, but the effect it had on her mother. For weeks she could barely hold down food; the result turned her skin a pallid shade. Her hair — once lush and beautiful — became brittle.
At the end of her life, the Great Beauty known as Marie Dumont had been so fragile that she couldn't lift her arms to embrace her daughter.
And the duke was dismayed by how his favorite lover's looks began to fade.
Marie loved him, but she was no fool; she suspected the duke would not do his duty by his illegitimate daughter. So she had only one recourse.Take my journal, my love, she’d whispered into Emma’s ear in the days before her death.The duke told me things. So many secrets. If he doesn’t come for you, use it.
After her mother’s death, months and months went by, and he never once came to call. Emma had heard he claimed a new lover in Paris: an actress her own age.
So Emma sold whatever she could of her mother’s valuables and booked passage to England. The next time she saw her father, she recounted a mere half of the secrets her mother had written down: business dealings, bribes to other members of the House of Lords, and other items of interest journalists would be eager to hear.
In short, Emma blackmailed him.All I want is a reference,she had said.Give me that and you’ll never have to find out what else my mother wrote. You’ll never see me again.
He gave it, and Emma allowed him to burn those pages — but only those pages. She kept the rest, because she was Marie Dumont’s daughter, and she wanted a little of her mother left behind.
Her expression must have given something away, because James said softly, “Not a pleasant memory, I take it.”
Emma lowered her eyes to her book. “It was nothing.”
