Two hours later she was ensconced in a bedchamber overlooking the front drive of the house. Miriam was in the room next to her and had used a headache as an excuse to take herself to bed. Emerald hoped that she was not sickening with a cold, or worse; wandering over to wide doors curtained with billowing yards of soft fabric, she opened the latch. Sunlight streamed in unbroken across a balcony draped in ivy. Walking outside, she was perfectly still. The sound of long beaching waves rolling in from the northern seas could be heard and, if she stood on her tiptoes, there in the distance, between the crease of two green hillocks, she saw the ocean, dancing and sparkling in the sun. The ocean. Her ocean, the warm blue of the Caribbean mixed with the wilder grey of Fleetness Point.
A noise had her looking down as Asher Wellingham rounded the corner on a large horse. Moving back into the room, she watched him until he was out of sight, the fluid muscle of his racing stallion reflected in the surface of the lake as he passed it, a dark shadow against a darker line of the trees.
He was a man who did not seem to fit into the strict regimens of London’s manners or its rules, a duke who seemed more dangerous than he had any right to be, and more menacing. She smiled. Now there was a word that described Asher Wellingham exactly.
Menacing.
And she would need to be very, very careful.
He was dressed in black at dinner and his hair was wet. The length of it was intriguing. Too short to be easily tied into a queue, but far longer than most other men of the ton wore theirs.
As they filed in to the dining room, Emerald found herself seated to Asher’s left, his sister acting as hostess, in his mother’s continued absence, at the foot of the table with Taris to her left. An older couple made up the numbers, near neighbours invited for the evening, for Miriam had decided not to come down and had asked to have a tray delivered to her.
‘Is your room satisfactory, Lady Emma?’ Lucy asked as the steaming plates of food were brought to the table. Beef, pork and chicken. When her stomach rumbled she pushed down on it hard and hoped that nobody had heard.
‘It’s very beautiful and I can see the ocean from the balcony,’ she added, frowning as Asher looked up sharply. Tonight he looked tired. She saw that he was drinking heavily, saw too the gesture Lucy made to the servant behind to bring her brother a carafe of water. He didn’t touch it.
‘Emma hails from Jamaica,’ he said as the silence grew.
The man named William Bennett nodded. ‘I was there once, a long time ago. Did you know a family by the name of de la Varis?’
‘No, I don’t believe so. My father was an invalid, so we were quite insular.’ For a second she wondered how it would be best to keep track of all the lies and decided that later she would write out her fabrications in a diary. Relaxing into the role, she picked up her confidence and continued. ‘My aunt and uncle lived close by and I had Liam, of course. My cousin,’ she qualified as the man looked puzzled.
‘And your own mother?’
‘Oh, she was a beautiful woman. Evangeline.’ Emerald enunciated the newness of the name lovingly and just the saying of it conjured up a golden-haired beauty to stand alongside her sick but handsome father. She smiled. She had always filled her world with dream people. When her mother had gone. When her father had returned with yet another woman whom he insisted she call mama.
Dreams had saved them all and made them whole and good and true. It was not so hard here to imagine cousins or a beautiful mother who had not deserted her.
‘Liam is about your age, then?’ Lucy’s query was strongly voiced. Of all the Carisbrooks she was the most inquisitive.
‘No, he is a little older,’ she replied evasively, trying to remember the exact number of offspring she had invented for her fictitious cousin. Would ‘a little older’ render such children possible? Had she said four?
‘And did he like to read, Lady Emma?’ Lucy continued.
‘Like to read?’ Danger spiralled.
‘I think my sister is referring to the books in your aunt’s drawing room.’ When Lucy smiled and nodded, interest sharpened in his eyes. ‘Miriam does not strike me as a scholar of Arabic philosophy.’
‘And you think that I would be?’ She forced a laugh and was rewarded with a frisson of uncertainty. ‘Indeed, your Grace, the books were my father’s.’
‘Ahh, yes of course. The devout and invalided scholar?’
Emerald wondered at the edge of disbelief she could plainly hear and was relieved when Lucinda again garnered her attention.
‘I should like to sketch you while you are here, if I may, Lady Emma.’
Emerald looked up sharply. Was she jesting? Dangerous ground this. She didn’t know quite how to answer. How easy would it be for Lucy to fathom the memory of Liam Kingston in her face? ‘Are there many of your works here at Falder?’
‘That one is mine.’ Her hand pointed to a large watercolour above the fireplace depicting the castle and Emerald caught her breath.
‘You have a considerable talent. Do you sell them?’
‘No, but I gave Jack Henshaw one once as a gift and Saul Beauchamp. Asher’s friends,’ she clarified as Emerald looked puzzled. ‘I have not mustered up the courage to show them further, but if you would like a look at some other portraits I have done I would be more than pleased to show you.’
Portraits? Of her brother, perhaps? Emerald felt a rising interest until she saw the dark anger that coated Asher Wellingham’s eyes.
She was pleased when the servants began to clear away the plates and the women were able to repair to the smaller salon.
Taris sat against the window and placed his hand on the cold hard surface of the glass. From where he stood, Asher could see the outline of mist that surrounded his print. He wondered just how much of it Taris could also see. Today he had tripped over a stool in the study. A year ago he would have walked straight around it.
‘Emma Seaton is not as she seems.’
Asher stiffened and waited for clarification.
‘No, she is stronger than she pretends to be. Much stronger.’ He paused for a moment before continuing. ‘Describe her for me, Asher. What does she look like?’
‘Her eyes are the colour of the sea, she has the shortest hair I have ever seen on a woman and she never removes her gloves.’
‘Why not?’
‘God knows why, for I certainly don’t.’
Taris began to smile. ‘And her face?’
‘You could see nothing of her?’
‘I could hear that she is beautiful.’
‘That she is.’
Taris’s sudden laughter unnerved him. ‘And when was the last time you thought a woman beautiful?’
As Asher walked away from
