LITMIR.BIZ

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It has been six years. We’re no longer children, are we?”

      “He will be coming back here as the new duke,” Emmaline reminded her friend. “You won’t be able to avoid him. And if you were to tell him the truth, he’d certainly understand. Or I could explain everything to him for you.”

      Charlotte shook her head. “No, don’t do that, please. He can’t know. I couldn’t possibly look him in the eye once he knew, not knowing what I’d see. Please, Emmaline, let’s not speak of this anymore. Just take this,” she said, pulling off the heavy betrothal ring and putting it in her friend’s hand. “There, that’s better. It was as if I had a small millstone circling my finger. From now on, we shall pretend it was never there, and Rafe never needs to know. Are we agreed?”

      “Agreed, although I doubt such a secret will stand for long, not once Rafe has returned.” Emmaline examined the fine Ashurst ruby set inside a cluster of diamonds. “This ring has been in our family for untold generations. How often do you think such a pretty thing was employed to hide an ugly truth?”

      They sat silently for a few minutes, each lost in their own thoughts, before Charlotte asked what she might be able to do for Emmaline in the coming days.

      “I really can’t be sure. There are no...that is, there is nothing to be laid to rest in the family mausoleum. I suppose, for the sake of propriety, there must be a service of some kind at some point. The few relatives we have left need to be notified. Nicole and Lydia. Oh, dear. You know whom else that means, don’t you?”

      “Helen,” they said at the same time, and then Emmaline smiled.

      “I could say I sent a letter off to London and it became lost in the post?”

      Charlotte nodded, not quite suppressing a smile of her own. “The post has been notoriously erratic recently, hasn’t it? Why, by the time your letter arrived in Grosvenor Square, it could be whole days after the service, and with the Season already begun. No one could expect Helen to leave Mayfair in the midst of the Season.”

      “Least of all Helen,” Emmaline pointed out, her smile widening, until the two of them dissolved into guilty laughter, which is how Captain Alastair discovered them a few moments later as he entered the main saloon.

      “I’m sorry. Am I interrupting?”

      Emmaline wiped at her moist eyes and looked up at the captain, who appeared bathed and shaved and positively resplendent in his brushed and pressed uniform. “Oh, no, no. Miss Seavers and I were...we were just reminiscing about a family memory. Captain, may I introduce you to my dear friend and neighbor, Miss Charlotte Seavers. Charlotte, Captain John Alastair, who was kind enough to personally inform me of...of the tragedy.”

      She quickly explained the man’s continued presence to Charlotte, and his generous offer to help her wade through the necessities that must be dealt with in the coming days.

      “Captain, I cannot thank you enough for your kindness to my friend,” Charlotte said, holding out her hand. He bowed over it elegantly, Emmaline thought. And then Charlotte got to her feet after only one quick, interested look at Emmaline, saying she was needed at home and must leave. “My mother is not quite well,” she explained to the man. “I only stole a moment to sneak here once the rain stopped, to see how you were, Emmy.”

      “You can’t stay for supper?” Emmaline inwardly winced, wondering if her lack of disappointment was evident in her voice.

      “No, I’m sorry, I can’t. Oh, but I forgot!” Charlotte reached into her pocket and pulled out a small package wrapped in ivory paper and tied with a small red bow. “Happy birthday, Emmy. It’s only a silly bookmark, and I’m afraid my embroidery isn’t what it should be. But please know I give it with love,” she said, and then kissed her friend’s cheek. “Captain,” she said, dropping into a quick curtsy, “it was a pleasure to meet you, and I thank you for being so considerate as to offer your support to Lady Emmaline during this trying time. I’m sure I’ll see you again, at the memorial service?”

      The captain looked to Emmaline, who realized she was suddenly holding her breath, and then back to Charlotte. “Why, yes, Miss Seavers, I shall look forward to that.”

      Emmaline watched the captain as he watched Charlotte depart the room, and then she quickly looked away as he turned back to her, so that he shouldn’t know that she’d been staring. But who could resist staring, when the man’s presence seemed to fill the room with light, charging the very air with an excitement she could not name, yet knew she had never before experienced.

      “May I add my congratulations to Miss Seavers’s sentiments, ma’am, and wish you as pleasant a birthday as possible under the circumstances,” he said, inclining his head toward her.

      She didn’t know where the words came from, what part of her normally reticent self had allowed such a thought to enter her head yet alone escape her lips, but suddenly Emmaline heard herself saying, “Captain, I would consider my natal day to be more of a blessing and less of a reminder of my continuing gallop into old age if you could please resist addressing me as ma’am again.”

      His low chuckle sent hot color flooding into her cheeks. “A thousand apologies, Lady Emmaline. Are you feeling quite decrepit? Surely you’re not anything so ancient as ma’am would suggest. At six and thirty, I believe I have some years on you.”

      “Good Lord, yes,” Emmaline shot back, suddenly willing to give as good as she got. “You’re positively tottering on the brink of the grave.” Then she realized what she’d just said. “Oh, dear. No matter what anyone says, we seem to keep circling back to Charlton and the boys, don’t we? I still imagine they’ll all come storming back in here at any moment to put the lie to what I know is true.”

      Did she sound as if that was a prospect much to be wished, or the thing she would dread most in the world? Really, she had to take control of her tongue, and quickly, or the captain would wonder if he’d blundered into a madhouse.

      “May I?” Alastair asked, indicating with a small gesture that he’d like to join her on the couch.

      “Oh, yes, please do,” she said, tucking her horrid black skirts more closely around her just as if he’d planned to plop himself down right next to her when the couch could easily accommodate a half dozen people. “And would you care for some wine?”

      “Thank you, no,” he said as he sat, and then bent down to pick up something that had fallen to the floor. “Yours?” he asked, holding up the ruby ring.

      Denying the dratted thing would open up questions about Charlotte, and as the story could only reflect badly on her brother and Harold, she quickly claimed the ruby as her own. “Thank you, Captain,” she said, reaching for it. “It was my mother’s, and always much too large for me.”

      And then the dratted ring made a liar out of her by stopping at her second knuckle as she attempted to slip it on her finger. She resisted the urge to fling it across the room.

      “Ma’am—Lady Emmaline...?”

      “Just Emmaline, please,” she said, sighing. “And I shall call you John, since we’re just the two of us here. And then, John, I should tell you that I just quite blatantly lied to you, shouldn’t I?”

      “About the ring. Yes. But you don’t have to explain.”

      She relaxed. “Good, because I really don’t want to.” She slipped the ring into her pocket and picked up the small wrapped present. “Shall we open this instead? I love presents, and Charlotte is always so inventive with hers, even if she insists she has no talents. Just this past Christmas she gave me a small, smooth rock she’d painted to look like a toad.”

      Actually, Charlotte had given the toad a face that greatly resembled that of her nephew George, but the captain didn’t have to know that.

      The captain put his hand on her wrist. “Lady... Emmaline,” he said, so that she forgot all about Charlotte’s present. “I should leave.”

      “Leave?”

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