Page 78 of To Marry and to Meddle
“I love you,” he said, more softly this time. “The evening you walked into my box at the Belfry was the best evening of my entire life.” He reached out his free arm to wrap around her waist, pulling her out of her seat and unceremoniously onto his lap before she quite realizedwhat had happened. “I would wear a bloody yellow waistcoat for you, even, if you asked it of me.”
“Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep,” she said breathlessly, her eyes locked onto his, trying desperately not to allow the tears that were filling her eyes to spill.
“I won’t,” he murmured, lowering his head to hers. It was perhaps a minute or several centuries later when he lifted his head from hers. “But just to be clear—I didn’t actually promise to wear a yellow waistcoat. You do understand that?”
“Not yet, at least,” she said cheerfully, pulling his head back down to hers, and smiled against his mouth as she felt his answering grin.
Twenty-Three
“My head is still aching,”Emily said ruefully on Thursday morning of the following week as she stepped down from the carriage in front of the Belfry.Morning, truth be told, might have been a stretch—she was fairly certain she’d heard the bells of St. Martin’s tolling the noon hour just a minute ago—but now wasn’t the time to quibble over details.
“I’m not surprised,” Julian said, sounding amused as he handed her down and shut the carriage door behind her. “How many glasses of sherry did you have?”
“Two,” Emily said with great dignity, trying not to squint in the sunlight. In actuality, it had been three. The previous evening had been a festive one, with the wine flowing liberally at a dinner party hosted by Violet and Lord James, and it had been well past midnight before they’d arrived home, whereupon they’d retired to their bedroom and proceeded to not get very much sleep at all.
Today, however, Julian had risen in the late morning, and had bundled a protesting Emily out of bed, downstairs to breakfast, and into the carriage before she quite knew what had happened. It was an unseasonably beautiful late-autumn day, the sky a perfectly crisp blue, a few wispy white clouds scuttling overhead on a faint breeze. Emily shivered and was glad she’d at least had the good sense to puton her spencer—it was a new one in a rich shade of green wool that she thought looked quite fetching on her—before allowing herself to be hauled from her perfectly warm home. Not that she felt particularly fetching at the moment, truth be told—her hair had been hastily braided into a knot at the nape of her neck, but strands of it were already coming loose around her face, no doubt completing the picture of a lady who was feeling decidedly rumpled.
“We’re at… the Belfry,” she said, stating the obvious as she blinked up at the building before her.
“We are,” Julian agreed cheerfully, looking maddeningly unaffected by the previous evening’s excesses. She was quite certain he’d had a good deal more to drink than she had, but he looked as fresh as a daisy, his cheeks slightly flushed in the cool wind, that rakish lock of hair doing all sorts of rakish flopping on his forehead. It all seemed distinctly unfair to her—but then, as Diana would say, such was the life of a woman.
“Is there a reason we are here at the Belfry and not at home in bed?” Emily asked, striving to keep her voice pleasant. The past week had passed in a blissful blur—it would be a shame to ruin it with a sleep-deprivation-caused argument with her husband.
“Tempting as that does sound,” Julian agreed, keeping her hand tightly gripped in his as he led her up the steps, “I have something to show you.”
He proceeded to lead her into the theater and through its hallways, Emily struggling to remain patient despite her curiosity. Eventually they drew to a halt before Julian’s office door.
Emily looked at him inquiringly. “You do realize I’ve been here before, don’t you?”
Julian, however, merely looked smug, the infuriating man. “Do you need your eyes checked, wife? Perhaps you might take a second glance at the door.”
Narrowing her eyes at him, Emily did as instructed—and then went still. Perhaps shedidneed spectacles—she wasn’t sure how she hadn’t noticed it before. There, on the nondescript wooden door before her, was the plaque with Julian’s name—and then, directly below it, one that readEMILY BELFRY.
There was nothing so terribly remarkable about it, a simple brass plaque with her name printed plainly, and yet Emily felt a strange emotion course through her at the sight, her name there on the door beneath her husband’s, a signifier that, in this world so different from the one she had been born to, she had a place where she was welcome—where she belonged.
“Julian,” she said, her eyes still fixed on the plaque before her, but before she could continue, he interrupted.
“Let’s look inside, shall we?” he asked, opening the door and then stepping back to allow her to pass through before him. Stepping into the office, it was impossible not to notice that the furniture had been moved; whereas previously Julian’s desk had dominated the back wall, that space was now lined with bookshelves, Julian’s desk having been moved to the left wall instead.
And against the right wall was another desk.
Herdesk.
There was a softclickas the door shut behind them, and Emily took a few steps into the room, reaching a hand out to run along the wood of the desk that would be hers. It was empty at the moment, barring a pen and inkwell, and—she stopped.
A script.
She took another step closer, reaching down to pick up the first page.
The Talk of the Ton.
She whirled around, and Julian was there, behind her.
“You were right,” he said simply. “It’s a good idea. Let’s roast theton, and make them all come here to watch it—most of the ladies who come out of curiosity won’t return, but some… perhaps some will. And in any case, the ones that won’t return aren’t the ones we need to be worried about, anyway.”
He stepped forward to take the piece of paper from her unresisting hand and place it back on the desk.
“I know who you think I saw you as, when we agreed to wed—I know you think I married you because you were perfect and well-behaved and had already proven that you could emerge unscathed from even the muckiest of scandals. But Emily, there is no other prim and proper debutante in all of London I would have even considered marrying for a second—from the moment I met you, I could not stop thinking about you. The parts of you that always fascinated me the most—well, they weren’t the parts of you that paint lovely watercolors or make polite drawing room conversation. It’s the Emily who speaks her mind, who meddles at the theater, who tells her parents and her husband exactly what she thinks—that’s the Emily I fell in love with. Glimpses of that Emily were the reason I married you in the first place. And I’d like to spend the rest of our lives making sure you never again doubt that I want you for who you truly are.”
