“That brother of yours is demanding your presence.”
“It’s about time!” she exclaimed as she rushed to join him. “How is he this evening?”
“Doing exceptionally well, but dreadfully anxious to see you.” Nicholas took her arm, more to prevent her unseemly haste than to lend escort, Emily decided. “That blue you’re wearing does wonders for your eyes.”
“You’re very kind,” she said, using her most formal tone. Determined to project her most ladylike behavior and do justice to her attire, she adopted a slower, more graceful gait that would have done the countess proud.
When they reached the hallway leading to her brother’s room, however, she almost broke into a run. The door stood open and she would have dashed through it to hug him if Nicholas had not grasped her arm. “Wait. You should not approach too closely just yet,” he warned. “Let’s be prudent.”
“Joshua, darling!” she said, so desperately happy to see him, gripping the doorjamb with one hand and Nicholas’s arm with the other for support.
How tall Josh had grown these past months! Her eager gaze traveled from his beloved face to his skinny arms and then the length of his legs beneath the covers. She’d been twelve when he was born. With their mother a victim of childbed fever shortly after that, Josh’s care had fallen to her. He was more like a son than a brother. And now her dear boy was nearly grown.
“Tell me how you are,” she pleaded. “I would hear it from you.”
“Well enough.” He crossed his lanky arms over his concave chest and deepened his frown. “And I am bound to tell you, sister,” he announced, his voice much deeper and more forceful than she remembered. He pinned her with a glare. “You have sealed your fate by coming here.”
“No, no, my dear, you must not worry about that,” she said, holding out one hand as if she was touching him, soothing him. “Lord Kendale assures me that the danger of contagion is no longer of much concern. You must not fret—”
“Contagion is not the problem I am addressing, Emily,” he declared. “It is your very presence among us that will do you worse than a bout with the cholera.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. “What in the world could be worse than that?”
He took a deep breath, his glare whipping to Nicholas, then back to her. “You will be damned by everyone you know if he does not marry you. Am I not correct in this, my lord?”
She heard Nicholas clear his throat. At first, she believed he would not answer Josh’s impertinence, for the silence stretched on for what seemed too long. Then he sighed. “You have the right of it, Loveyne. Indeed. She has been compromised beyond help, through no fault of her own.”
“Or of yours!” Emily exclaimed. “Nicholas, you cannot possibly be considering—”
“That marriage between us would solve matters. Joshua has a perfect right to make the demand,” he said without inflection.
“But he doesn’t understand,” she argued. “Josh cannot possibly realize the complications such a mésalliance would involve.”
“He is your brother, Emily,” Nicholas replied as if that justified the matter of Josh’s interference. “No one can force you to accept, of course, but I shall make my offer. Will you marry me?”
As proposals went, she found it sorely lacking in emotion. His expression was devoid of feeling, his voice too carefully controlled to betray a jot of either satisfaction or anger. She could in no way discern what Nicholas was really thinking about all of this. Small wonder. He was caught in a trap of her making with only one honorable way out of it unless she refused him.
She should refuse. Her heart sank in despair. On the one hand, she would have to render useless her brother’s demand and risk both his pride and his good opinion of her.
Judging by the look on Joshua’s face at the moment, he would never forgive her if she spurned his effort to protect her.
On the other hand, she could agree to a marriage that was almost certain to founder upon the rocks of Nicholas’s resentment and their social inequality.
He did not really love her. She had been nothing to him but a youthful indiscretion, easily discarded and all but forgotten.
His father had said that he was betrothed to Dierdre Worthing. However, Emily knew he did not love Dierdre, either, or he would have come back to England and married her long before now. Despite her apparent suitability, that one would make Nick a terrible wife, Emily thought wickedly. How tempting it was to know she could prevent that with a word.
Nicholas’s strong fingers tightened on her arm. In warning or encouragement? she wondered.
“Emily, this is not open to argument,” Joshua declared, sounding for all the world like their father in one of his rare attempts at disciplining them when they were younger. As if he had read her mind, he added, “You know very well what Father will say. You have no damned choice. None.”
She gaped at him. “Joshua James Loveyne, you mind your language!”
He glared back. “Then you mind your reputation!”
“Here now, there’s no cause to quarrel,” Nicholas admonished. “Emily will do the right thing. She only needs a few moments to adjust to the idea,” he said to Josh, as if she were not there.
“‘A few moments?”’ she snapped, yanking her arm out of Nick’s grasp. “‘The right thing’? Since when? It might have been the right thing seven years ago after what you did! Now, I’m not altogether certain I would have you if you went on bended knee and begged, Nicholas Hollander! Oh, excuse me, my lord,” she said with all the sarcasm she could muster. “I should use your title, should I not? Have you thought of that at all? How do you think I would answer to my lady?” She threw up both hands for emphasis. “Your esteemed father vowed I would be laughed out of the country should I even aspire to become a countess!”
“My father would have said anything to drive a larger wedge between us, Emily. You know he had another bride in mind for me.”
She shook with rage. “A flaming pity she so conveniently escaped your mind when it most counted! I should like to have known of her myself before I fell into your arms like some shameless trollop!”
“Wait! What’s this?” Joshua demanded, springing upright in the bed.
Nicholas strode over to him and braced his hand on Josh’s shoulder. “You stay right where you are, young man.”
“Fetch your weapons, sir,” Josh growled, “I demand satisfaction for my sister’s honor.”
Emily could have laughed at Nick’s expression of dismay if she had not been so worried Josh truly would do something foolish. Nick would never allow a duel of any kind, but her brother’s beet-red face and clenched jaw told her he would neither forget nor forgive until he had acquired some sort of satisfaction.
“Josh, he didn’t—Nicholas did not dishonor me,” she hurried to explain. “I spoke only of the kiss. You’ve known of that for ages. Everyone knows of it. Nothing else happened, I promise. Not ever.”
Except for
