Page 55 of The Viscount's Promise
With that, she walked off, leaving Emily to her lonely corner.
Unable to hold herself up a moment longer, Emily lurched into the closest chair. She should not have let the woman affect her so much, should not feel this burning jealousy. So Malcolm had loved her once. But their romance had been long ago. The woman may have voiced her desires to start up intimacies again with Malcolm, but that did not mean he would have her. After all, he could not possibly still be in love with Lady Morley. Not after she had married his brother.
Especially not after the way he had kissed Emily that afternoon, as if they were the only two people on earth.
Even so, she could not seem to focus on that beautiful memory. Instead she remembered how he had refused to be near her when the others were around, how he had voiced his insistence to stay separated until they were back on Willowhaven grounds.
How his mood had altered the moment he had seen Lady Morley.
She had believed it had been the reminder of his brother, the grief of losing him. And he had not corrected her. He had let her blather on about remembering the dead and finding joy despite the grief, when all along it had been his unrequited love for Lady Morley that had affected him.
Her body heated with shame.Of course he had loved Lady Morley. The woman was everything a man would want. And Emily was...not.
But she was being a fool. She was letting the woman get to her. Yes, Malcolm was a rake. Yes, he had no doubt had many affairs over the years. But she was convinced he cared for her now. He could not have been playing with her all this time.
Though mayhap it had just been the romance of the wedding that had carried him away, a small voice in her head whispered. Maybe, just maybe, seeing Lady Morley again reminded him of what he could have. Instead of settling for her.
No, she reprimanded herself severely, forcing herself to recall the look in his eyes as he’d pulled her close that afternoon. He was not playing with her. And he would prove it this evening. He would walk into the room and smile at her. And she would have no doubt that she meant something to him.
Malcolm entered then, as if she had willed him into being. His sharp gaze scanned the room, stopping briefly on Lady Morley, before finishing a circuit of the room and finding her in her lonely corner. She straightened, a desperate anticipation making her heart pound in her ears.
He nodded, his eyes somber, and proceeded to make his way to Sir Tristan’s side without a second glance her way.
The hopes that had bloomed like spring flowers in her breast shriveled then, as if a cold winter wind had robbed them of their very lives. And she wondered numbly if she would ever be warm again.
• • •
The meal was done, and a good portion of the evening had been whiled away in the typical inane conversations and insipid music from the debutantes by the time Malcolm decided it was time to make a short escape from the drawing room. He could not look one more minute on Emily’s lovely face without rushing to her side, to hell with Lydia and her damnable presence.
Yet that woman’s pointed stares at Emily, and the cunning glances she sent his way, told him all he needed to know. She had not given up on the idea that Emily meant something to him. His one hope in protecting Emily was to make sure it stayed that, an idea, in Lydia’s head. She certainly would not create mischief over a mere assumption.
He hurried a short distance down the hall, slowing as he passed the billiard room. The deep buzz of conversation reached him, and the sharp crack as balls made contact on the baize tabletop. He could enter, immerse himself in conversation and company.
But what he needed was privacy. To set his mind to rights and comfort himself with some of Willbridge’s fine whiskey and the knowledge that Lydia would be gone by dawn. And so he went to the one place he was sure he would find what he needed: Willbridge’s study.
The room was dark and quiet, the sound of the partygoers a distant hum now. He shrugged out of his coat, then hurried to the hearth and quickly lit a fire. Once he had a merry little blaze snapping away, bathing the room in a faint orange glow, he strode to the cabinet in the corner and helped himself to what was within. The liquor burned all the way down into his gut, warming the chill in his bones. A chill Lydia had created. Damn, but the woman was the very devil, wrapped up in rosy cheeks and golden ringlets.
As if the very thought of her could summon her, she was suddenly there in the doorway. She smiled her slow smile. “I had wondered where you had gone off to,” she fairly purred, slinking into the room, closing the door behind her.
“I have told you once already this evening, madam,” he growled, his fingers tightening around the cut glass in his hand as she approached. “I want you to stay out of my way.”
“Oh, you don’t mean it,” she pouted.
“I do.” To prove the point, he slammed the glass down on Caleb’s desk and made to leave.
She stepped in his path, her hands out, effectively blocking him. “No, don’t leave.”
“We have nothing to say to each other.”
“You will not even let me apologize?”
He laughed, the sound harsh and echoing. “You have never apologized in your life.”
“Well I am now. I had thought you had gotten over me, you see. I did not know my presence here would affect you as it did.”
“You give yourself too much importance. You are nothing to me, madam.”
Her cornflower blue eyes, glowing orange in the firelight, widened. She tugged at a strand of her hair, dislodging a pale lock, wrapping it around her fingers. “Oh, now, there’s no need to be cruel, Malcolm.”
