LITMIR.BIZ

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consequences. He swore in amazement and kept her head against his shoulder, not wanting her at this moment to see his expression.

      I love you. He had heard her say it and the words had melted the cold hard mantle of ice that had coated his heart since he had lost his wife. Since for ever.

      Melanie. The soft whisk of an almost-breeze above him made him smile.

      ‘I will have the banns read, Emma, and we can be married next month. At Falder in the chapel.’

      When she looked up, tears magnified his face.

      ‘There are things about me that you do not know. Would not like to know.’

      ‘Tell me, then,’ he answered and in his words she heard soft amusement. The amusement of a man who would imagine small digressions, little feminine faults. Tiny flaws and imperfections.

      Lord, why was this not easier? She knew the answer as soon as she asked it. Because she had fallen in love with Asher Wellingham. And the promise of it was as sweet as it was forbidden. Not just the loss of her virginity now, but the sacrifice of her heart, and she was getting more and more caught up by the second.

      Tell him the truth.

      Tell him the truth.

      A voice chanted in the back of her head, but she could not do it. Could not stand to see what was in his eyes now turn to hatred.

      ‘Growing up in Jamaica was very different from here. The rules were very different. It was looser, less…moral?’ She left a question at the end.

      ‘Yet your father was strict?’

      ‘In some things he was.’

      And in some other things, like the taking of life, he wasn’t.

      The image of herself as a ten-year-old, standing on the deck of the Mariposa as her father slit the throat of a slave, impinged over illusion. She had never had a chance to become anything other than what she was and for a moment she hated Beau with such a loathing that she was shocked by it.

      ‘After my mother went, there were things that I should have learned…feminine things…that I did not know…do not know still.’

      He laughed and moved closer. ‘I can see no glaring faults in your upbringing, Emma, and I do not demand a wife who excels in tapestry or singing or the mastery of an instrument. Besides had you been raised here, you almost certainly would not have swum naked from the beach or gone to a bishop’s house dressed in little more than a gown. Or come to my room in your night shift and offered me your virginity. I should be thanking your father for the way that he brought you up.’

      He leaned across to pluck a bud from the bush next to him and tucked it in behind her right ear. ‘In the islands of the Pacific a woman promised to a man wears a bloom here.’

      Promised?

      Her fingers came up to feel the soft wetness of the petals and she made herself smile.

      ‘You cannot possibly know what it is you are doing, Emerald.’ Miriam’s voice quivered under the onslaught of anger and the remains of her cough. ‘Lord, child, but to bed him? To go ahead and actually fornicate with him…I cannot even contemplate what your parents would have thought of that.’

      ‘I suspect my mother may have understood, given that she was sixteen when she was pregnant with me.’ Emerald tried hard to hold on to what was left of her patience, though when her aunt went into another bout of a hacking cough she softened her voice. ‘In Jamaica twenty-one would be considered old to be unaware of the pleasures of the flesh.’

      ‘He must marry you, child. Surely he knows his duty as a gentleman…’ Shock mixed with utter dismay.

      ‘If I stood before the altar as Emma Seaton, I hardly think the marriage would be legal.’

      ‘So you would have a child outside of wedlock?’ Her aunt’s old face was pinched.

      ‘I am not certain if there even is a baby.’

      ‘Pretend it, then. You are ruined already.’

      ‘Pardon?’ Emerald could not quite comprehend what her aunt meant, though the wily look in her eyes was familiar.

      ‘The Carisbrook name is powerful. Pretend there is a child and marry him. As Emma Seaton if you need to. Who would know? You are young and fit. If a child did not come this month, then with the grace of God it will come in the next one.’

      ‘I could not do that…’

      ‘Oh, pah. Your father took away the future you should have had when he dragged you to sea for his own gains, yet despite every handicap of birth and upbringing your heart is still in the right place. The Duke of Carisbrook would be lucky to have you as a bride’

      ‘Lucky? A marriage based on lies?’

      ‘Untruth is often the result of need and circumstance; if life has taught you nothing else, it should have at least taught you that.’

      Emerald stared at her aunt, seeing clearly for the first time the ghost of her dead father. The change from the nervous and dithery old woman was amazing as, for a second, Beau shone forth in the lines of her face. Beguiling. Charming. Utterly selfish.

      ‘It is wrong…’

      ‘He is as lonely as you are and, if rumour is to be believed, has been since the unfortunate and premature demise of his wife.’

      ‘Which I caused.’ Emerald had had enough. She shouted the words, but as she dredged up the courage to explain further Miriam began to laugh. Not softly either.

      ‘Ahh, how the young torment themselves. You think Melanie Wellingham would not have died anyway from a bout of pneumonia after a cold long winter? You think a storm could not have whipped her husband’s ship to the ends of this earth and blown him off course to some other death?’

      ‘No. I think that if he had not met my family, he might be at Falder this very moment with a wife and children and a brother who could see. And if I told him the truth I could not bear to see the same thought in his eyes.’

      ‘Because you love him?’

      Emerald was silent.

      I love you. She had said it to him once.

      She was quieter as she answered and a thousand times more resolute. ‘If I did as you bade me to, I would have to live all my life in a lie. Like my father did. Always careful, never honest with anyone, for ever looking over my shoulder for the past to catch up.’

      Miriam sighed loudly as her hand came from beneath the bedcover. ‘It can’t have been easy on you, Emmie.’ Cold fingers played with the band of lace on her gloves. ‘I should have come out…insisted on some contact…for I knew my brother and he was not always such a biddable man to live with.’

      Emerald shook her head. Biddable?

      ‘I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.’

      For a moment Emerald was transfixed by the rawness of her voice travelling through time from childhood, and was stunned by the sheer memory of animosity and ill will.

      Biddable? She almost laughed at the understatement. No. There could be no happy ending. No small apologies or little mistakes. Lives had been lost and years had been taken; if the scars on her hands and her leg and her face had taught her anything, it was the fact that risk only brought regret. She shook her head and felt her resolve firming. Honesty was a policy that wreaked havoc on the good souls of those who had the misfortune to believe in it, and when she left England at least this way she would leave with her pride.

      Asher came to her room after midnight, when the house was quiet. He looked tired and when he reached out she moved away.

      A quota of penance? One night of loving for years of pain? It didn’t quite seem fair somehow, but her withdrawal was fashioned from kindness. If he hated her, all this would be so much easier. For him.

      ‘Last

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