Will looked so different from Chris, dark and solemn, always so perfect. ‘Of course not. Will is always serious and responsible. It’s hard to live up to his good name at Oxford, I can tell you. He knows what he wants out of life. He does what he should do.’
Emily was suddenly caught by something in Chris’s tone, something strangely wistful and sad. She had never heard that from him before. ‘And you don’t know what you want to do?’
‘Certainly not. What normal young man of my age does? Will is unnaturally solemn. It will get him into trouble some day. I intend to take my time deciding on things. Exploring the world.’
Emily sighed. ‘At least you have the time. I feel like mine is running out.’
Chris tilted his head back, his eyes narrowed as he studied her. He looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean? You’re still in school.’
‘But ladies can’t try things, can’t take their time to decide who they are. We have to find someone to marry immediately and then our lives are set. No more exploring. No more—deciding.’
‘Oh, Emily. You’re so pretty, you’ll have no worries there. You’ll find a very good husband and have a very good sort of life.’
He thought her pretty? Emily studied him carefully, feeling a little flustered, a little pleased and a little exasperated that he had missed her point. She almost laughed. She saw he was trying to help, to be kind, but he didn’t understand. Perhaps he couldn’t. Perhaps no man could. ‘What if being married isn’t what I want to do? Not the only thing, anyway.’
He frowned. ‘What else would you want?’
Emily felt a jolt of exasperation flash through her. ‘Oh—I don’t know!’ she cried, frustrated. She thought of Diana and how she wanted to write; Alex, and her sweetness and kindness to others. They all had so much to offer the world and no one seemed to want it. They only seemed to want women to set up nurseries and go over menus.
She remembered when she was younger and her father would take her to the office with him. When he worked, she would sit at a desk in the corner and look at the ledgers. She liked seeing how the accounts lined up, liked seeing the list of imported goods and imagining where they would go. She liked the way it all made sense.
‘Maybe I want to run a business, like my father,’ she said. ‘Or travel the world! Or invent things or raise terrier puppies. The point is, I don’t know yet. And I don’t have time to find out, as you do. Men are still young blades at twenty-five, while women are growing old and useless.’
He still looked adorably, maddeningly, puzzled. ‘But you’re a lady. Good at running a household, surely. Where would society be without that? Good at raising children, helping charities...’
Emily threw up her hands, the tennis racket she still held tumbling to the ground. ‘You just don’t understand, Christopher! It’s like speaking a different language—men and women will never decipher each other.’ She stalked away, down the pathway that led through quiet, shady stands of trees to the ornamental pond. It was usually a walk that soothed her, made her feel peaceful in nature, but today its beauty only made her feel more unsettled.
She dropped on to a wrought-iron bench near the edge of the pond and stared out at the rowboats that dotted the water. It looked like a French painting, all dappled light and hazy figures in white lazing in the warm afternoon.
She heard the rustle of footsteps and Chris sat down carefully beside her. She glanced up at him and he gave her a sweet, placating smile that surely melted hearts all the way from Oxford to the Scottish border.
‘Do you really think that is all a lady can do?’ she asked, feeling so sad. ‘Marry and do charity work?’
He glanced out at the pond for a quiet moment, as if thinking over her words. ‘It seems to be what most of the ladies I know want to do,’ he said. His smile turned mischievous. ‘Except for ladies who aren’t really ladies, of course.’
Emily had to laugh. ‘Actresses and chorus girls? Women who work in cafés?’
‘And what do you know about that?’
‘Not nearly as much as you do, I’m sure. But maybe I should be an actress.’
‘You wouldn’t be the fun sort.’ He studied her closely, until she wanted to squirm. ‘You would be some terribly serious Shakespearean tragedienne, or maybe you would sing grand Italian opera. The sort that makes me fall asleep.’
Emily shook her head. ‘I can’t carry a tune at all, I’m afraid. I got tossed out of music class. And I can’t memorise a poem to save my life. I am the despair of our literature teachers.’ She felt a pang that there was something she could not, after all, excel at, when other classes came so easily. ‘I guess it must be marriage for me after all.’
She felt a gentle touch on her hand, and, startled, she glanced down to see Chris’s fingers over hers. His touch was warm, tingling, delightful. She looked up at him to see his cut-glass handsome face was serious, watchful, even more beautiful than ever. For just that one instant, she thought he might actually see her.
‘Some bloke will be so lucky, Em,’ he said softly. ‘And he had better work bloody hard to make you happy.’
Emily didn’t even notice the cursing, she was too lost in his eyes. Like drowning in endless blue. She felt like someone in one of the novels Diana loved so much, caught in moments that felt out of time, sparkling, delicate, perfect. His expression changed as he looked at her, darkened.
She was drawn closer to him, unable to turn away, as if invisible, unbreakable bonds tied them together. As if in a hazy, warm dream, she felt Chris’s arms come around her, drawing her so close nothing could come between them. Emily found herself longing to seize the moment, to make it her own and never forget it.
She looped her arms around his neck and closed her eyes, inhaling the warm scent of him, of fresh air, clean linen, faint lemony cologne, of Chris himself. It made her feel dizzy, giddy, like too much champagne.
She gently touched his cheek. He moaned a low, hoarse sound, and his lips claimed hers at last. She met his kiss with everything she had, all the emotion locked away inside her. It wasn’t a gentle kiss, as surely first kisses usually were, but one filled with heat, desperation, need. She wanted it to go on and on for ever.
A burst of laughter nearby broke into Emily’s dream and she pulled back from Chris’s embrace, hot and cold all at the same time. Flustered and panicked, and full of a strange, bursting—joy. Had she just kissed Chris Blakely? Where had such a fantastical thing come from?
She stared up at him in astonishment. He looked just as shocked as she did, a dull red flush over his sharp cheekbones. His eyes closed and he shook his head, an appalled expression spreading over his face.
Appalled? At the thought of kissing her? Had she been that bad at it? Emily suddenly felt so disgusted with herself.
‘Em,’ he said, his voice tight and strangled, so unlike his usual joking self. ‘I’m so very sorry. What a rotten thing...’
Emily wanted to hear no more. She couldn’t stand that something which had been, only a moment before, strange and wondrous and almost beautiful, had become something rotten to him. She jumped to her feet and backed away, trying not to scrub at her lips with her
