nodded sympathetically. She could assuredly see that a shop where stock required unpacking and shelving, and accounts required keeping, might be too much for Mr Lorne now. But she couldn’t bear to lose her sanctuary again so soon after refinding it.
‘That is a very great pity indeed, Mr Lorne,’ she said. ‘I’m very sorry to hear it.’
‘Ah, well, there should be plenty of books for me in Brighton, even if I have to get my grandchildren to read them to me,’ Mr Lorne said. ‘And maybe someone will want to buy this place from me and restock it with all the latest volumes.’
‘I do hope so. Though it would never be quite the same without you.’
Mr Lorne chuckled. ‘Now you’re just flirting with an old man, Mrs Carrington.’
Emma laughed in reply. ‘And what if I am? I have never met another man who could talk about books with me as you do.’
‘Then you must find a few of those novels and we’ll talk about them when you’ve read them. I’m not tottering away just yet.’
As Mr Lorne made his way back to his desk, Emma scanned the rows of titles. Mysterious Warnings. Orphan of the Rhine. They sounded deliciously improbable. Just what she needed right now. Something a bit silly and romantic, preferably with a few haunted castles and stormy seas thrown in.
She climbed up one of the rickety ladders to look for more on the top shelves, soon losing herself in the prospect of new stories. She opened the most intriguing one, The Privateer, and propped it on the top rung to read a few pages. She was soon deep into the story, until the bells jangled on the opening door, startling her out of her daydream world. She spun around on one foot on the ladder and her skirts wrapped around her legs, making her lose her balance.
For an instant, she felt the terrible, cold panic of falling. She braced herself for the pain of landing on the hard floor—only to be caught instead in a pair of strong, muscled arms.
The shock of it quite knocked the breath from her and the room went hazy and blurry as the veil of her bonnet blinded her. Willing herself not to faint, Emma blinked away her confusion and pushed back the dratted veil.
‘Thank you, sir,’ she gasped. ‘You are very quick-thinking.’
‘I’m just happy I happened to be here,’ her rescuer answered and his voice was shockingly familiar. A smooth, deep, rich sound, like a glass of sweet mulled wine on a cold night, comforting and deliciously disturbing at the same time.
It was a voice she hadn’t heard in a long time and yet she remembered it very well.
Startled, Emma tilted her head back and looked up into the face of Sir David Marton. Her rescuer.
He looked back at her, unsmiling, his face as expressionless as if it was carved from marble. He appeared no older than when they last met, his features as sharply chiselled and handsome as ever, his eyes the same pale, piercing grey behind his spectacles. His skin seemed a bit bronzed, as if he spent a great deal of time outdoors, which gave him the appearance of vigorous good health quite different from the night-dwelling pallor of Henry and his friends.
David Marton looked—good. No, better than good. Dangerously handsome.
Yet there was something different about him now. Something harder, colder, even more distant, in a man who had always seemed cautious and watchful.
But Jane had said he too had had his trials these last few years. A lost wife. Surely they were all older and harder than they once were?
His face was expressionless as he looked down at her, as if he caught falling damsels every day and barely recognised her. How could this man make her feel so unsure, yet still want to be near him? Made her want to know more about what went on behind his infuriatingly inscrutable expression?
Suddenly Emma realised he still held her in his arms, as easily and lightly as if she was no more than a feather. And her arms were wrapped around his shoulders as they stared at each other in heavy, tight silence.
He seemed to realise it at the same moment, for he slowly lowered her to her feet. She swayed dizzily and his hand on her arm kept her steady.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Emma said, trying to laugh as if the whole thing was just a joke. That was the only way she had ever found to deal with Henry and his friends, by never letting them see her real feelings. ‘That was terribly clumsy of me.’
‘Not at all,’ he answered. He still watched her and Emma wished with all her might she could read his thoughts even as she hid hers. With Henry’s friends, who had tried to flirt with her or drunkenly lure her to their beds, she had always known what they were thinking and could easily brush them off. They were like primers for children once she learned their ways.
David Marton, on the other hand, was a sonnet in Latin, complicated and inscrutable and maddening.
‘I fear I startled you,’ he said, ‘and these ladders are much too precarious for you to be scurrying along.’
Emma laughed, for real this time. So Sir David hadn’t entirely changed; she remembered this protective quality within his watchfulness before. Like a medieval knight. ‘Oh, I’ve been in much more precarious spots before.’
A smile finally touched his lips, just a hint at the very corners, but Emma was ridiculously glad to see it. She wondered whimsically what it would take to get a real smile from him.
‘I’m sure you have,’ he said.
‘But I haven’t been lucky enough to have anyone there to catch me until today.’
And finally there it was, a smile. It was quickly gone, but was assuredly real. To Emma’s fascinated astonishment, she glimpsed a dimple set low in his sculpted cheek.
No man should really be allowed to be so good looking. Especially one as cool and distant as Sir David Marton.
‘It’s good to see you at home again, Miss Bancroft,’ he said.
‘Ah, but she is Mrs Carrington now, Sir David,’ Mr Lorne said, sharply reminding Emma that she wasn’t actually alone with David Marton.
She quickly stepped back from his steadying hand. The warmth of his touch lingered on her arm through her sleeve and she rubbed her hand over it.
‘Indeed she is,’ Sir David said, his smile vanishing behind his usual polite mask. ‘Forgive me, Mrs Carrington. And please accept my condolences on your loss.’
Emma nodded. She was so disappointed to lose that rare glimpse of another David and be right back to distant, commonplace words. Or maybe she had only imagined that glimpse in the first place. Maybe this really was the true David Marton.
‘And I am sorry for your loss as well, Sir David,’ she said. ‘My sister told me about your wife. I remember Lady Marton, she was very beautiful.’
‘You knew my mother?’ a little voice suddenly said.
Startled, Emma turned to see a tiny girl standing beside Mr Lorne’s desk. She was possibly the prettiest child Emma had ever seen, with a porcelain-pale face and red-gold waves of hair peeking from beneath a very stylish straw bonnet. She was very still, very proper, and if her demeanour hadn’t convinced Emma this was
