Lady Emma Read online

  “Even though I gave myself up to Sidmouth in order to save you.”

  “I expect you had your reasons for that,” Emma said. She had been shaken to the core when she had discovered that Tom had gone to Lord Sidmouth and offered himself in her place. Sidmouth had been about to arrest her for treason and sedition; the caricatures she had drawn for the reformist newspapers had been inflammatory, inciting disorder. Her arrest would have been a monstrous scandal and Tom had saved her from that, given his life to save her from ruin a second time.

  But then, he had been the one to ruin her in the first place.

  For a moment there she had almost softened towards him. Then she remembered that he had owed her. He had paid the debt but she knew he must have had other motives because he always did. He was selfish through and through. He had never loved her. Misery impaled her.

  “I did have my reasons.” Tom spoke very softly.

  Emma turned away. “I don’t want to hear them.” She dragged in a breath. “It’s better that you stay dead, Tom. This is my betrothal ball.” Her tone was fierce. “I won’t let you ruin my life over again.”

  “You’re going to marry that stuffed shirt?”

  “He’s a good man.” Emma reached for all the reasons people had given her as to why she should marry Lord Cholmondeley. “He is wealthy and respectable and kind-”

  Tom caught her by the upper arms. “He will stifle you, Em. You can’t live like that.”

  Emma was afraid that he was right but she would never give him the satisfaction of admitting it.

  “I want my old life back,” she said. “I want to be rich. I want to be part of society again. Lord Cholmondeley can give that to me. You cannot. You never could.”

  “What about your reforming ideas, your work for charity?” Tom’s hands were urgent on her, holding her tightly, refusing to allow her to evade the difficult questions. “You had a passion for helping people, Em. You wanted to do good-”

  “I can still help people,” Emma argued. “I can give them money.”

  “It’s not the same,” Tom said. “It’s a good thing to do but you gave them your time, Emma. You gave them yourself, because you cared.”

  “Because I had no choice!” Emma burst out. “I worked in those orphanages and hospitals because I knew that way I would get a square meal each day and I was hungry and cold and I had no money after you left me!” It was partly true; it was only after she had started to work amongst London’s poorest and most needy that she had discovered in herself the need to work for good. She was ashamed of the spoilt little debutante she had once been, so greedy, so unthinking. She would never go back to that but she was tired of struggling and she longed to be comfortable again. The price of that comfort was marriage to Lord Cholmondeley and abandoning any passion there might have been in her life.

  The silence settled over them. Tom’s hands slid down her arms leaving a trail of fire and longing in their wake. Emma could not help the little shiver that wracked her. Tom felt it. His eyes narrowed to a concentrated darkness.

  “Does Lord Cholmondeley kiss you the way I do?” He whispered. “Does he make love to you the way I did?”

  Emma shivered. “I don’t want-” She started to say.

  “Yes, you do.” His mouth took hers again with hunger unappeased. She shook deep inside at the passion it unleashed in her.

  “So he doesn’t make love to you,” Tom said, as he released her.

  “I don’t want him to,” Emma snapped.

  “That I can well believe,” Tom said. “Who would? Yet you will still marry him.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s bigamy.”

  “No it is not,” Emma said, “because you are – officially – dead.”

  “You know I am not.”

  “I have a very short memory,” Emma said. “Once you walk out of here – in two minutes – I will forget you immediately.”

  They stared at one another.

  “If you do not go now,” Emma added, “I will scream.”

  Tom smiled. “I’m not going anywhere other than to your bed, to prove to you that you want me still.”

  “No I don’t,” Emma said. “I want you to leave. I’m warning you, Tom.”

  Tom’s smile deepened, that wicked pirate’s smile she knew so well. He did not move.

  Emma took a deep breath. She screamed. Loudly. The effect was dramatic. The music died away. The ballroom fell silent then broke into a babble of shouts and questions. People were running for the door. She could hear steps on the stair, growing closer, blocking Tom’s escape.

  Tom laughed. He kissed his fingers to her. “I’ll see you soon, darling.”

  He leapt from the balcony, swinging down into the ballroom below. Emma ran to the edge of the gallery and peered over. She could not help herself. She saw Tom land deftly in the centre of the floor. People screamed and fell back, scattering like chaff in the wind. Tom looked up at her and for one, long moment their eyes met and held. Then he ran for the door. No one, least of all Lord Cholmondeley who was standing like a lemon, attempted to stop him.

  “A housebreaker! Call the runners!” Lord Brooke, Emma’s father, was running back and forth ineffectually, waving his arms like a windmill. Her brother Justin seemed frozen into immobility, his mouth gaping like a landed fish. They were all hopeless. Tom could run rings around them.

  The front door slammed, shaking the house to the foundations. Emma’s mother burst into the gallery, closely followed by her father and Lord Cholmondeley. Emma had not known that the Countess of Brooke could run.

  “Emma!” Her mother was panting hard and red with exertion. “How could you? How could you cause another scandal at your betrothal ball?”

  So it was her fault. She might have known her mother would be more concerned about the gossip than for her welfare.

  She was in disgrace again.

  Part Four of Seven

  Tom soon managed to lose himself in the multitudes that thronged the late night London streets. It was one of his greatest talents that he could slip through a crowd unnoticed. He walked quickly, heading towards the river. He had been born in the sprawling network of rookeries that spread out from the docks and when he needed to he could disappear once again into the spiders web of lanes and alleyways. It was only a few miles from Berkeley Square and from Emma but it was another world.

  Emma.

  She was so beautiful. She was bright, strong and courageous. He ached for her.

  His body ached with unsatisfied lust. His heart ached with love.

  He was not sure when he had first fallen in love with Emma. Certainly it had not been when he had first seduced and married her. She had been a spoiled debutante and he had wanted her solely for her fortune and because her luscious body had been made for pleasure. His pleasure. Her father, curse him, had made sure that Tom never got his hands on the money which left only the sex. Together they had been spectacular, wild, passionate, and utterly uninhibited. He had never known a woman like her.

  Even so, that was not what had led him to fall in love.

  In the beginning he had not thought himself capable of such emotion. He had been too cynical, corrupted by all the terrible things he had seen and done in his life. His childhood had scarcely existed; a bastard, carelessly fathered by the Duke of Farne on a housemaid, he had been thrown on the streets and forced to fend for himself from the time he could walk. He had been ruthless in his drive for self-preservation, so ambitious in his slippery climb to wealth and power that he had crushed anyone that stood in his way.

  Emma had changed him. She had grown into a woman he could love and in the process she had made him a man worthy of love in return. But it was too late for them. Too much had happened to force them apart.

  It was a foggy night. Tom drove his hands deep into the pockets of his coat and turned his face towards the river. The chill air clung to his skin, laden with moisture that felt like tears. The night smelled of smoke and melancholy. At times like th
is London was a lonely and friendless place. Or perhaps that was just how he was feeling tonight. He should find an alehouse, sit near the fire and drown his sorrows in drink.

  He was not sure why he had sought Emma out tonight. When he had read of her engagement in the papers he had told himself he could do nothing to prevent it. Emma was lost to him. She should be free to make a new life. Yet still he had been drawn to the house like a ragged moth that had already burned itself on this particular flame before. He had told himself he only wished to see her. Once he had seen her he had told himself that he only wished to speak with her. He had deceived himself.

  He turned away from the river and walked briskly towards the swinging sign of the Lord Nelson inn. They had renamed the place in honour of the hero of Trafalgar. Tom remembered it from his youth as the Rose and Crown. It had been there since the time of Henry VIII and it was just as rough now as it had probably been then. Tom liked that. No one asked any questions in the Rose and Crown. He sat down in an alcove by the fire, ordered some ale from a slatternly tavern wench and prepared to drink himself into oblivion.

  Three hours later, however, oblivion would not come. Instead the drink brought a degree of clarity with it. He was still thinking about Emma, remembering the silken softness of her skin and the sweet taste of her mouth. Now that he had seen her again, spoken with her, touched her, kissed her, she was like a fever in his blood. He would never permit her to wed another man. She was his and he was going to take her back.

  Part Five of Seven

  The picnic, in the grounds of Lady Carson’s villa beside the Thames, had dragged on for the entire afternoon and Emma was lamentably bored. It was always the same people at every event she attended, the aristocratic and the rich, those at the very pinnacle of society. Perhaps it was a lack in her that she found them all so very dull and their conversation, revolving as it did around the next ball and the laziness of the servants, to be so repetitive. Years ago it had not mattered to her. She had revelled in the privileges and pleasures of just such a life. Now she wanted more. She had tried to speak to her father and her brother about politics and current affairs, only to be firmly snubbed by them for showing an unfeminine interest in men’s business. She had expressed a desire to attend lectures and literary soirees but her mother had snubbed that too, saying that no woman should display any intelligence for fear of repulsing her suitors. She had suggested that she might undertake some charitable work but everyone had squashed that ambition, predicting that all it would achieve would be her early death as a result of catching some fatal illness from the poor. She was stifled, imprisoned in a gilded cage, just as Tom had said, and she could no longer pretend that it was worth it for the money and the clothes and the parties. They were shallow pleasures. She liked them but she needed something else, something more profound.

  Emma hated that Tom had been right about her. She hated that he knew her so well, that he knew what she needed. She had lain awake all night after she had seen him at the ball. She was furious that he was alive. She was relieved that he was not dead. She was terrified he would ruin everything for her for a third time. She was secretly, treacherously excited that he had re-entered her life. She hated him. She loved him. She wanted him.

  Her body was burning up with wanting him; it tormented her with all the frustrated longing that only he could satisfy. And the one thing that was certain was that she would not succumb to her desire for him because he was a low, deceiving scoundrel and she was better off rid of him.

  She took another daintily cut cucumber sandwich and munched through it glumly. She did not know what to do about the future. Leaving aside her frustration at the emptiness of the life on offer to her, it was wrong to marry Lord Cholmondeley when she was already the wife of another man. She tried to tell herself that no one would know, that if ever it came out that Tom was still alive she could pretend ignorance but that was not good enough. She knew and that made all the difference. She was no longer sure she could go through with her second marriage. It felt wrong. But perhaps that was only because she longed for Tom so hopelessly.

  She pushed the sandwich aside. There were wasps crawling over the strawberries now and buzzing around the glasses of lemonade. The ladies were wilting a little in the heat, their parasols tilting at rakish angles. The conversation had faltered too under the power of the sun. Several ladies looked as though they were about to fall asleep and the gentlemen were flushed and sweating.

  Lady Carson staggered to her feet. Perhaps she had been drinking something stronger than mere lemonade.

  “Ladies…” Lady Carson’s voice sounded slurred too, “let us repair to the house where we may refresh ourselves and take some iced tea.”

  “Come along, Emma.” Lady Brooke, her face tomato red, her turban askew, took Emma’s arm. He hand felt like a claw. Since the unfortunate incident of the housebreaker at the ball the previous week Lady Brooke had practically refused to allow her daughter out of her sight. Emma was fairly certain that her maid was spying on her on her mother’s behalf and that there was a servant positioned both outside her door and beneath her window to ensure that she would not fall from grace again. Fortunately no one had recognised Tom. But the Brookes were terrified that the match with Lord Cholmondeley, so carefully engineered, would end in ignominy and Emma’s disgrace yet again.

  As they were making their way slowly along the shady gravel paths towards the house the Duchess of Devenish claimed her mother’s attention and Lady Brooke could scarcely cut her. Emma slipped away, beneath the willow trees that bordered a small stream, where the sun and shadow dipped and played on the thick grass and the sound of the water was cool and refreshing. She wanted some solitude.

  It all happened so quickly. One moment she was picking her way beneath the branches of the trees, the next Tom was beside her and she was not quite able to disguise the leap of pleasure she felt to see him. Oh dear, this was bad. She had hoped – she had wanted – to be quite indifferent to him if she saw him again. Instead it was as though her body had instantly awoken. She felt alive and stirred up, her blood fizzing with anticipation and excitement.

  “Hello, Emma,” Tom said. He was smiling with wicked amusement to see her confusion. “What a beautiful day for a picnic.”

  “I do wish you wouldn’t do that,” Emma said crossly, trying too late to mask her response to him. “It is frightfully disconcerting how you can arrive with no one noticing.”

  “I’d be happy to go and renew my acquaintance with your mother,” Tom said, “but I am not sure she would be as pleased to see me as you are.”

  “I’m not happy to see you, “ Emma lied. She turned a shoulder to him. “What do you want, Tom?” She threw at him. “I asked you to leave me alone.”

  There was a silence. The dappled shadows of the willow trees shifted and danced about them. Emma turned and looked at Tom, arrested by his stillness. Suddenly it felt as though the day was holding its breath.

  “I’ve left the Home Secretary’s service,” Tom said. “Garrick has offered me work in Ireland, managing his stud. I’ve always wanted to breed horses.”

  “Have you?” Emma said. She felt a pang that she had not known. She knew so little about Tom. In the early days of their marriage they had not spent a great deal of time talking. She felt part-glad and part-sorrowful because she suspected that if they had spent more time in conversation and less in bed they would probably have discovered that actually they had nothing in common, nothing to talk about.

  “Congratulations,” she added politely. “That is generous of your brother considering that you once tried to take everything from him.”

  Tom did not smile. In fact his eyes looked sad. “Garrick is prepared to give me a second chance,” he said. “I shall always be grateful to him for that.” He straightened his shoulders. “That is why I came, Emma. I wanted to ask if you would do the same. I want you to come with me.” He drew a deep unsteady breath. “I love you, Emma. I always did.”

  I want you to c
ome with me…

  The ground rocked beneath Emma’s feet. The daylight seemed to dim. Tom was still talking but she did not want to hear his words, those treacherous, persuasive words that might seduce her from the course of reason all over again.

  She put her hands over her ears. “Stop!” She said. “You don’t love me, Tom! You never did!” Her voice seemed very loud, drowning the rustle of the leaves above their heads.

  “Maybe not in the beginning,” Tom said. He stood squarely, meeting her gaze. “All right,” he said. “I didn’t love you when we wed. I seduced you for your fortune. I admit it. But then I fell in love with you-”

  Emma shook her head violently. Her heart was breaking all over again for the naïve little debutante she had been, the girl who had tumbled headlong into love with a handsome rogue and had been so thoroughly betrayed. She was not sure how she had survived Tom’s desertion the first time but she knew she would shatter if it were to happen to her again. She knew she would not survive. She could not take the risk.

  “Don’t spoil everything for me again, Tom. Please!” She said. Even so there was before her eyes such a tempting vision, a vision of the two of them galloping through the wild beauty of the Galway countryside together. Perhaps Tom really did love her, perhaps they could be happy. Yet this was precisely how she had been seduced before. She had wanted to believe Tom sincere and it had led to nothing but misery.

  Tom was waiting; she could see the tension that held his body rigid with hope. She could see the anxiety in his eyes.

  “I can’t,” she said, and saw his body slump and the hope die. “Don’t you see, Tom? I can’t take that risk on you. I dare not. Not after all that has happened.”

  Tom took her hand in his. Again she felt that treacherous ripple of affinity, a steel thread, stronger than attraction. She shut it out of her heart. She was Lady Emma Brooke again now. She had been given a second chance. She would marry Lord Cholmondeley Warner and she would make a life full of good works and charitable causes. And if, occasionally, she might think of Tom and secretly long for his touch, no one would guess. No one would know. That part of her life was over.