Page 54 of To Marry and to Meddle
For his part, Julian closed the door behind him and approached her carefully, as one might approach an unfamiliar dog.
“Emily,” he said yet again, still not quite certain what the next words out of his mouth were going to be, but as it happened, it didn’t matter, because she seemed to have found her voice.
“Why couldn’t you have just let it go?” she asked quietly.
Julian drew to a halt beside a high-backed armchair and reached out to rest his forearm upon it, allowing the chair to bear a bit of his weight.
“Is that how you expect to spend every family dinner for the rest of your life, then? Ignoring your mother’s attempts to put you down, to make you small?”
“She wasn’t trying to make me small,” Emily burst out, her voice faltering a bit on the last word. “That’s just how she is sometimes—you know our marriage is still very new, and it must be quite an adjustment for her, not having me at home anymore.”
“Home to order about,” Julian said flatly. “Home to use as she saw fit. Like a beautiful vase she wanted to display just so.”
“She is mymother,” Emily said, real heat in her voice now. “It might be easy for you to turn your back on your family—a family that, from what I’ve seen so far, I’d have given anything to be a part of as a girl—but for some of us, it’s a bit more difficult.”
“Easy,” Julian repeated. “You think I find it easy, having to see my brother in secret, when my father’s not in town?” He pushed himself upright and took a slow step toward her, then another. “Do you think I found it easy, sitting in the very back of the church at Frannie’s wedding, then skipping the wedding breakfast altogether so I wouldn’t cause a scene?”
“And yet your brother was here today, all but telling you that your father has had a change of heart, but you refused to listen! To even consider seeing him!”
“My relationship with my father is my own concern, not yours,” Julian said, each word coming out as chipped and cold as ice. “It’s nothing you need worry about.”
Her face went pale at that, and Julian instantly wished—what? Did he wish the words unsaid? It was more that he wished the entire evening undone; nothing had gone right today, from the moment Robert showed up on his doorstep, demanding to know what this talk was of a wife.
“Of course,” Emily said calmly, her face resuming a bit of color. “I’m sorry—I don’t know what I was thinking. This marriage is based on an arrangement between us that, I believe, we both understood perfectly well, and I seem to have forgotten myself.”
Julian gazed at her a long moment, wishing to tell her that she was wrong, that she hadn’t forgotten herself at all, that he felt it too, this uncomfortable desire to be more to each other than they had agreed to be—but something at the back of his mind, some voice that lurked there, warned him to be cautious. Take the escape she was offering.
“It’s nothing to apologize for,” he said, his voice sounding stiffer to his own ears than it had ever done in his life. “I—I became too emotional. I should have left you to deal with your parents as you see fit. It’s none of my concern, after all.”
“Right,” she said faintly. “None of your concern.” She shook her head a bit, as if to clear it, and then said, “Goodness, it must be getting late,” despite the fact that it was barely past nine. She gave a large, patently false yawn. “I’m afraid I’m quite tired tonight—perhaps I’ll just go to bed.”
Alone, was the unvoiced but clearly understood addendum to that sentence.
“Of course,” Julian said politely, inclining his head, and then—for lack of anything else to do—turned and left the room, angry with himself for the small pang caused by the realization that he’d have to sleep by himself. Theirs was not a love match, after all—why on earth had she been sleeping in his bed to begin with? She had apologized for forgetting herself, but clearly he had done so, too, if he was now sulking at the prospect of sleeping alone, as any man of his class might reasonably expect to do.
However, as he walked into his own bedchamber, preparing to spend the night alone for the first time since he’d been married, he couldn’t help but think: For a marriage of convenience, this—their fight, the emotions that had been stirred up, everything about the entire bloody evening—wasn’t feeling terribly convenient at all.
Sixteen
Emily didn’t like to thinkherself a coward, but the undeniable fact was that it was proving to take a bit of time to work herself up to these afternoon calls. It wasn’t that they had gone terribly, precisely—she, like any sensible person, had started with the ones that she had known would be well received, which had really just given her an excuse to pay calls on all of her friends. Violet and Diana had both been the recipients of her visits, of course, as had Sophie, who had seemed terribly glad of the company. Sophie had been widowed a few years earlier, and though her husband (and the remnants of her sizable dowry) had left her well-provided for, she did seem a bit lonely at times, tucked away in her large house near Hyde Park.
From there, Emily had moved down the list of ladies she had befriended during her various Seasons, most of them married now and therefore not subject to the whims of easily scandalized mamas. These had, for the most part, been fairly enjoyable, too—none of them would outright snub her, no matter how scandalous her marriage.
From that point, however, things had gotten a bit trickier. There were a fair number of ladies whom Emily was not at all certain would be receptive to a call from a lady who had impulsively married a man who dabbled in thetheater, of all things—particularly one with a reputation like the Belfry’s—but she was obligated to try.
And so she did.
And this was how she found herself smiling over too-hard lemon biscuits in the drawing room of Baroness Northbridge, trying very hard to rid herself of the impression that she was not at all welcome there. The baroness was a thin woman in her late thirties, Emily guessed, with dark hair and eyes and an angular face that would have been lovely under ordinary circumstances, though at the moment it was slightly marred by the hard, scrutinizing look in her eyes.
“Tell me, Lady Emily,” Lady Northbridge said, then quickly corrected herself. “I mean, Lady Julian. I apologize.”
“Not at all,” Emily said, smiling sweetly, though she thought that it was nearly impossible to believe that such a slip was accidental after the third time it happened in as many minutes.
“It’s just so difficult to adjust to your change of circumstances,” Lady Northbridge said in confidential tones, as if Emily herself had not even noticed that she had gotten married and moved into a new home, with a new name. “It all seems rather… sudden.”
This raised a warning flag in Emily’s mind, carrying as it did its delicate implication of scandal. She would have to proceed carefully.
“It wasn’t terribly sudden, actually,” she said, setting down her biscuit with some relief. “Lord Julian and I became acquainted during this year’s Season, you see, and met at a number of events, before we were able to spend more time together at Lord Willingham’s house party.”
