Page 58 of The Viscount's Promise
“Yes.” Her voice was firm, sure. And utterly weary. “If you ever cared for me, Malcolm, you will leave me in peace. I have made up my mind and will not change it again. It is over.”
She walked from the room. In a flash he saw it, the long procession of people who had left him. And at the end of it all, Emily. The one person in the world he had thought would never turn her back on him.
The armor that had so long encased his heart and in the last days had begun to fall away reappeared in that instant. He had been a fool to open himself up again. Would he never learn? He should leave and never return.
But he was still bound by his promises to Willbridge, damn it. Would that he could shed them as easily as others seemed to cast him off. But he would be damned if he would relinquish this one last claim to honor he possessed.
Blowing out the candle, he left the room. He would see this promise through even if it killed him. And then he would leave Willowhaven and hope to never see Lady Emily Masters’s sweet face again.
• • •
Emily rose from her bed before dawn the next morning determined to get on with her life as if Malcolm had not come into it and turned it on its end. She rose early and dressed in the pale gray light with the intention of escaping to the music room, as she had every morning since this infernal house party started. But as she walked through the guest wing, Bach following close to her heels, her feet slowed.
There was a disturbing emptiness inside her. She dug deep down, searching for that ever-present urge to create music, the desire to shelter herself in song. It must still be there, awaiting her as it always did, ready to help her through her most trying times. But there was only an echoing silence in her heart. By the time she reached the long gallery, her determination to go on as if her heart had not been shattered was gone as well, falling away like dead leaves in an autumn wind. Her steps faltered and stopped, and she stood in the middle of the vast room, surrounded by all manner of Masters ancestors. Feeling completely alone.
As if sensing her disquiet, Bach pushed his nose into her hand, his warm tongue flicking out to wet her skin. The contact jolted her back to herself. She blinked, dragging in a deep breath. She was stronger than she realized. Isn’t that what Malcolm had been telling her?
At the thought of him, she sucked in her breath, the pain of last night returning just as sharp, just as jarring. And along with it, anger that she could allow him to affect her so. How could she have allowed herself to be lulled into caring for the man? She had thought she was smarter than this. Yet here was her heart, aching and twisting in agony over Malcolm’s unexpected betrayal.
But no, she could get through this, could go back to her life as it had been before he had come back into it. It did not matter that he had made her feel precious, that his kisses had touched something new and exciting in her, something she had never thought to feel.
That he had made her love him.
She did not realize she had begun to cry until she felt the telltale wetness on her cheeks. She swiped it away, desperate to get rid of this proof of her weakness. Somehow thinking if she appeared normal without, she would become calm within.
More fool, she. No matter that she might appear unfazed by her break from Malcolm. It would do nothing to heal the wounds deep inside.
Bach pressed into her side. She laid her hand on his smooth head and looked down into his single mournful eye. “It’s for the best,” she said, though whether it was more for him or for her she didn’t know. “In a matter of days, he will return to London. And we will remain here. Where we are safe. Where no one can hurt us again.”
But not for long, she realized with a jolt, for in the happiness and misery of the last days there was one very important thing she had forgotten: the trip for Daphne’s coming-out was still very much on.
In the spring, Emily would go to London.
She blanched as the reality of it came crashing down on her. But if she had been unwilling to go before, she refused to go now. Yes, there would be people there who would gape and stare at her. But there was one added reason that horrified her even beyond that.
Malcolm would be there.
As she was wont to do under great stress, her gaze sought out one particular portrait along the paneled gallery wall. The tears she had so quickly suppressed returned. Her brother Jonathan’s face smiled down at her, perpetually young, forever twelve years of age. She rubbed at her aching chest absently. He had been the brave one, the one who had truly lived life. He should be the one here today, planning his future, taking chances. Not her, who had become so trampled by circumstances that she could hardly function.
Her eyes skimmed over his beloved face, still faintly round with youth, his gray eyes smiling down at her with that hint of mischief he had never been without. It had always seemed a strange quirk of fate that they had been conceived together, one child full of a zest for all that life held, the other content to watch it all pass her by. Even so, they had been as close as any two siblings could be. Emily had adored him, more than willing to face her fears in order to share in his adventures. With him she had been brave. The person she could have been.
She closed her eyes tight as regret and grief washed over her. All of her courage had seemed to vanish with Jonathan’s untimely death. She had thought mayhap in the past days she had begun to feel that part of herself reawaken.
Because of Malcolm, her heart whispered. But no, she would not think of him or she would shatter.
She would return to her original plan to get her sister married off before the trip to London. Yet the final ball, the culmination of the grand, nearly fortnight-long house party, was but three days away. There was no possible way she would be able to wring out a proposal for Daphne by then.
But she was not the same person she had been two weeks ago. Opening her eyes, she gazed up in determination at the smiling face of her brother. Who was to say she could not manage it? She would renew her efforts to pair off Daphne and Sir Tristan, to bring about their engagement. She had been close before; surely it could not take much more effort on her part.
No more distractions. She would do everything in her power to see that the dreaded trip to London never took place.
Chapter 21
Malcolm heaved a sigh. Emily, with incredible cunning and skill, had successfully herded Tristan and Lady Daphne to the river’s edge, pairing them off into a small boat. He had done his best to keep his distance from her over the past two days, since she had walked out on him and shown him how little she was willing to fight for what they had. It was as if their sweet interlude had never happened, as if he and Emily had not found a connection of both body and soul.
As if he had not nearly asked her to share her life with him.
He wished he could put this whole farce behind him. If he left, however, and Tristan went ahead and did something idiotic with Lady Daphne, he would never forgive himself. That, or Caleb would kill him, and deservedly so.
