Page 102 of The Forbidden Lord
“In any case, I can’t talk to him,” Blackmore surprised her by saying.
“Whyever not?”
His handsome features clouded over. Pacing to the fireplace, he stood staring into it a moment as if contemplating something. Then he said in a low voice, “She told me she wouldn’t marry me if I questioned your brother.”
“What?” both she and St. Clair exclaimed at once.
“You? Marry?” St. Clair added, his eyes alight with mischief.
Jordan shot them both a resentful glance. “A man has to marry sometime, doesn’t he? And unless some new bill passed in Parliament while I was gone, an earl may still marry whomever he wishes.”
Only with difficulty did Lady Dundee stifle the gleeful laugh threatening to erupt from her throat. Blackmore planned to marry Emily. Good Lord, the girl had pulled off the match of the decade, possibly the century! It was what she’d hoped for, but she hadn’t dreamed it would come to pass.
She was careful to answer him diplomatically. “Of course you may marry.” She paused. “I take it you’ve proposed. But has she accepted?”
Obviously this was a touchy subject. Lifting the brass poker, he stabbed it into the fire until sparks threatened to ignite all his furniture. “Not exactly. It depends on what I do about Nesfield.”
“That’s so strange,” Ophelia mused aloud. “What could Randolph possibly know about her that would make her refuse to marry a man she loves?”
His startled gaze flew to her. “She told you she loved me?”
“Not in words. But whenever you walk in the room, it’s as noticeable in her reaction to you as the scent of lavender in her hair.”
That seemed to please him. Just as she was about to ask if he shared Emily’s feelings, however, a new voice came from the doorway.
“Good day, milord. I understand you’ve been watching for me.”
As all eyes turned to the ginger-haired man in the doorway, Blackmore exclaimed, “Hargraves! You’re here! What took you so long? They told me in Willow Crossing that you left two days ago!”
“In Willow Crossing? You were there, milord?”
“Yes, I left the same day you did,” Blackmore explained impatiently. “I’d hoped to catch up with you on my way back.”
“My horse lost a shoe, and I had to stop in Bedford for a new one. You must have passed me on the road while I was at the blacksmith’s there. I’m sorry, milord. I got here fast as I could.”
Ophelia eyed the wiry figure with some suspicion. “Blackmore, who is this fellow?”
“My servant. At my request, he went to Willow Crossing to find out whatever he could about Emily.”
Blackmore had been spying on the girl? He truly was enamored of her, wasn’t he?
“Well? What have you learned?” Blackmore asked Hargraves in clipped tones.
Hargraves appeared a bit uncomfortable about speaking before so many people. But his eagerness to please his employer apparently overcame that. “I asked people about any connection between Lord Nesfield and Miss Fairchild, and most said there was none. But the apothecary told me an interesting tale. Seems the girl’s mother died more than a year ago. She’d had a wasting disease something like your stepmother’s. She suffered pain a great deal, and Miss Fairchild was the one who made up her medicines, primarily laudanum for the pain. The day she died, she was found by her daughter.” He paused for effect. “And Lord Nesfield.”
Jordan stared at his servant, not sure what to think. No, he knew what to think. Emily would never willingly watch any creature suffer, especially her mother. Could she have given her mother more laudanum than she should have? And then Nesfield happened along?
Her voice trickled into his consciousness.Lord Nesfield knows things about me … God forbid you should marry a woman who keeps things from you, who might be a thief or a…a murderer.
Good God, that made perfect sense. It explained why she’d absolutely refused to tell anyone the truth. She’d committed a crime. Nesfield could have her hanged for it, and she knew it.
He ought to be appalled. They were talking about matricide, after all. But he remembered too well the horrible pain Maude had suffered at the end. He would eagerly have given her extra laudanum if he could have.
No wonder Emily had been almost frantic. No wonder she’d begged him to trust her. She’d thought, and probably rightly, that Jordan could do nothing if she were accused of murder. She might even have feared that he would despise her once he learned the truth.
Well, it wasn’t her he despised. “Devil take him!” Jordan glowered at Lady Dundee. “Your brother Randolph is lower than the lowest snake!”
Apparently, she’d made a similar deduction concerning Emily and her mother, for she said, “Yes, he is.”
