LITMIR.BIZ

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and a series of harlots had taken the brunt of his temper.

      Mostly.

      She was pleased that Asher was not of that ilk. Indeed, drink seemed to mellow him, make him easier to talk with, more vulnerable.

      ‘Yet you can remember the recipe by heart?’

      ‘It is a simple one, which you have to drink all at once.’ She handed the tumbler to him as she finished.

      He sniffed it and looked up. ‘Is it supposed to smell this way?’

      ‘Yes.’ She tried to stop laughter as she registered his incredulity but could not quite. ‘Strong liquor requires a strong antidote.’

      When he made no move to swallow it she leant across and removed the cup from his hands to take a sip.

      ‘See. Not poisonous. In fact, quite palatable.’ She repressed a shiver as the aftertaste hit her and hoped that he had not seen it.

      ‘Palatable?’ He questioned when he had finished. ‘You call that palatable?’ A film of froth coated his upper lip before he licked it away. ‘Come, Emma, and I will show you palatable.’

      Once outside, he took a turning that she had not seen before that led to a conservatory almost entirely formed by glass, opening out to a wide and formal garden.

      ‘My mother’s contribution to the place,’ he remarked as he saw her astonishment. ‘It is a tradition that the Wellingham wives are always good at something. My grandmother was a horsewoman of great repute and my great-grandmother a musician. It is said at night through the corridors of the west wing that you can still hear the haunting tunes of her pianoforte.’ He smiled. ‘Ghosts are mandatory in a place like this, though I have never seen one.’

      ‘What was Melanie good at?’ The thought became a voiced question and she cursed as she saw his withdrawal.

      ‘My wife was also good at music and good at being a wife,’ he said simply and took the head off an orange chrysanthemum at his feet.

      ‘She was beautiful.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Is she the reason you do not sleep?’

      He stood perfectly still. God, he seldom spoke of Melanie. And never to anyone save Taris. But here in the light of day, after a night when he hadn’t had a moment’s sleep, it was suddenly easy. Emma Seaton made it so.

      ‘I was not at home when she died. I was not at home for her funeral. I should have been home.’ He was astonished at the well of information he had given her and the depth of his anguish. If he had been by himself, he would have slammed his fist into something hard and finished off another bottle. But he wasn’t alone.

      ‘My brother also died when I was not with him. He was three.’

      Asher looked up and focused. For the first time since he had met her, he felt as if he was actually hearing about someone in her family who had been real.

      ‘I used to carry him everywhere, you see. I was six when he … went and acted his mother, I suppose. My name was the first one he ever spoke and I taught him songs in the dusk and rocked his hammock. He had a lisp. I remember that more now than his face.’

      ‘How did he die?’ She did not answer, though her paleness told him it had not been an easy death. He was trying to work out what lesson he could take from her confidence when she began to speak again.

      ‘How long ago was it that your wife died?’

      ‘Three years.’

      ‘People used to say to me “time softens pain.” And I used to think nothing will ever soften this ache. Nothing. But time did. It flattened out the rawness and left only memories. Good memories. Now when I think of James—that was his name—I think of his lisp and his curly blond hair and the thoughts make me smile.’

      ‘I rarely speak of Melanie to anyone.’

      ‘But you should, for it helps. A worry shared is a worry halved. Have you not heard the old adage?’

      ‘Your father again?’

      She smiled and in the light of the new day her dimples were as easy to see as the faint holes in her ears. For earrings, he determined, and not just one, either. A whole row of tiny marks pierced both lobes. He imagined jewels sparkling there and was still as a memory shifted and was lost.

      Reaching out, he touched the slight indentations and she didn’t stop him. Rather she leaned into his embrace.

      She was so damnably responsive, he thought. Any slight caress had her heart beating faster and the flush well upon her cheeks. What would it be like to part the moist lips of her womanhood and slip inside? The thought had him stiffening and he pulled away.

      Hell. After yesterday’s débâcle he was back to acting like some green boy straight out of school. He wondered if she would notice the thickening bulge at the front of his trousers. His much-too-tight trousers, he amended, and readjusted them for the second time in two days.

      The sound of his mother’s voice made him groan. To be caught in the gardens by a parent with his trousers metaphorically down was something he had not contemplated. It hadn’t happened at seventeen, so he had certainly not expected it to happen at thirty-one. Pulling the front of his long jacket closed he watched as Alice Wellingham, the Dowager Duchess of Carisbrook, was wheeled into the gardens by her maid. A quick look at Emma Seaton disorientated him. She was staring straight at him and trying not to smile. Lord, he thought. He was being given the run around by a Catholic chit, who had fed him a potion of ingredients that were causing his eyes to blur with tiredness.

      His mother’s smile was not helping either. He recognised that look, had seen it before every time some eligible woman had come into the sphere of his notice since the death of his wife, but today for the first time he was unreasonably irritated by it.

      ‘You look terrible, Asher.’

      ‘Good morning, Mother.’

      ‘You look terrible and your servants let it slip that you have not slept at all in a week. And you have finished as many bottles of brandy as you do usually in a month.’ Her voice broke. ‘You will kill yourself with this behaviour and I hate to think what might happen to Falder and the dukedom.’

      ‘Taris would undoubtedly assume the mantle of responsibility were such an unlikely event to occur.’ He was cruel in his response, but he had had this talk before and did not want it in front of Emma Seaton now.

      ‘Unlikely?’ His mother was about to say more when her eyes rested on the face of Emerald and he introduced her.

      ‘You are the Countess of Haversham’s niece, are you not?’

      ‘I am.’

      ‘Many years ago I had a passing acquaintance with her family. Which branch do you hail from?’

      ‘A distant one, I am afraid.’

      Emma was a master at not answering any question about her past, Asher thought, but his mother failed to note the fact.

      ‘She had a brother, Beauvedere. Have you ever come across him?’

      ‘I do not believe so.’

      ‘Then it is well that you haven’t—I often wonder what happened to him. He was a striking man with the bluest eyes and a way with the women that was legendary. Ashborne always said he would come to no good …’ She began to giggle. ‘I am sorry. It is age, I think, this constant referral to times past. Easy to remember what happened thirty years ago and hard to think what it was one did yesterday. Instead of regaling you with old nonsense, I should be asking if are you being properly looked after here at Falder. Do you like the room you’ve been given? You are in the yellow room are you not? Do you play whist?’

      ‘Badly.’ Emerald looked startled by the quick changes of topic.

      ‘Good. Then I shall set you up as my

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