duke seemed stunned by it, too. His piercing blue eyes interrogated hers. Then he cast a confused look at his hand, as though he weren’t certain how it had come to be gripping her arm.
For a moment, Emma’s heart invented the wildest fancies. That he was someone other than the cynical, embittered man he seemed. That beneath the Before and After sketched on his face, there was a man—a hurting and lonely man—who remained unchanged in essentials.
Don’t believe it, Emma. You know your heart is a fool.
He released her, and the side of his mouth pulled into a wry smile. “You can’t leave now, Miss Gladstone. We’re just starting to have fun.”
“I don’t care to play this game.”
She gathered as much composure as she could locate. Clutching the coins in one hand, she picked up her skirts with the other and made haste in the direction of the door.
“Don’t trouble to bid me farewell,” he called.
I won’t.
“I shan’t bother, either. We both know you’ll be back.”
She paused—briefly—midstep. The duke believed they would see one another again?
Dear God. Not if Emma could help it.
Not in a thousand years.
“Isn’t it silly of me?” Miss Palmer stood in a draped corner of Madame Bissette’s shop, holding still as Emma measured her waistline. “More and more plump by the day. I suppose I’ve been eating too many teacakes.”
Emma doubted it. This was the second time in a month Davina Palmer had visited the shop to have a dress let out, and Emma had been stitching her wardrobe since her first Season. She’d never known the young woman to gain weight, and certainly not this rapidly.
Teacakes were not to blame.
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t Emma’s place to say anything. But she’d taken a liking to Miss Palmer. She was the only daughter of a shipping magnate, and heiress to his fortune. A bit spoiled and sheltered, but she had a sparkle to her. She was a customer who always made Emma’s day better rather than worse, and that said something. Most of the ladies who came into the shop looked right through her.
Today, when she met Miss Palmer’s gaze, there was no sparkle. Only terror. The poor girl so clearly needed a confidante.
“How many months along?” Emma asked softly.
Miss Palmer dissolved into tears. “Almost four, I think.”
“Does the gentleman know?”
“I can’t tell him. He’s a painter. I met him when he came to paint the portrait of our dogs, and I . . . It doesn’t matter. He’s gone. Went to Albania in search of ‘romantic inspiration,’ whatever that means.”
It means he’s a scoundrel, Emma thought. “What of your family? Do they know?”
“No.” She shook her head with vigor. “There’s only Papa. He has such high expectations for me. If he knew I’d been so careless, he . . . he’d never look at me the same.” She buried her face in her hands and broke into quiet sobs. “I couldn’t bear it.”
Emma drew the girl into a hug, rubbing her back in a soothing rhythm. “Oh, you poor dear. I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t know what to do. I’m so frightened.” She pulled away from the hug. “I can’t raise a child on my own. I’ve been thinking, if only I could place the babe with a family in the country. Then I could visit from time to time. I know it’s done.” Miss Palmer placed a hand on her belly and looked down at it. “But I’m growing larger every day. I won’t be able to hide it much longer.”
Emma offered the girl a handkerchief. “Is there anywhere you can go? A friend or cousin, perhaps. In the country, or on the Continent . . . Anyone who might take you in until you give birth?”
“There’s no one. No one who would keep the secret, at any rate.” She clutched the handkerchief in her fist. “Oh, if only I hadn’t been so stupid. I knew it was wrong, but he was ever so romantic. He called me his muse. He made me feel . . .”
Treasured. Wanted. Loved.
Miss Palmer didn’t have to explain it. Emma knew exactly how the girl felt.
“You mustn’t be hard on yourself. You aren’t the first young woman to trust the wrong man, and you won’t be the last.”
And yet somehow, the woman always paid the price.
Emma hadn’t landed in Miss Palmer’s delicate situation, but she, too, had been punished for the simple crime of following her heart. The memories still pained her—and the thought of watching the same cruel fate befall another young woman? It made her quake with anger at the injustice of it all.
“Emma,” Madame Bissette chided from the other side of the curtain. “Lady Edwina’s hem won’t sew itself.”
“One moment, Madame,” she called back. To Miss Palmer, she whispered, “Return next week to retrieve your altered frock, and we’ll speak further. If there’s any way at all I can help you, I will.”
“I can’t ask that of you.”
“You don’t need to ask.” Emma was determined. Her conscience would allow no less. She took Miss Palmer’s hands and squeezed them. “Whatever may happen, you will not be alone. I swear it.”
That afternoon, Emma’s concentration was so splintered, nothing went right. Twice, she had to rip out uneven stitches in Lady Edwina’s hem and rework them.
At last, it was closing hour.
“Are you coming out tonight?” her fellow seamstress asked after Madame had withdrawn to her apartment upstairs. “There’s to be dancing at the assembly rooms.”
“Not tonight, Fanny. You go on ahead.”
Emma didn’t have to offer twice. Fanny was out the door as soon as she could blow a kiss.
Another time, she might have enjoyed a rare evening of dancing, but not tonight. Not only was she worried sick for Miss Palmer, she was still reeling from her own encounter at Ashbury House.
The duke was probably laughing at his own cleverness even now. Marry a seamstress? Ha-ha-ha. What a joke.
How dare the man? Really.
Emma shook off the memory, telling herself not spare the duke another thought. She had more important things to do.
She took a stub of a candle from Madame Bissette’s drawer, placed it on the counter, and struck the flint as quietly as possible. After rummaging for a discarded scrap of brown paper, she ironed it flat with her hands and chewed on a stub of pencil, thinking. Waistlines had started to drop this season, moving away from Empire silhouettes. Concealing an expanding belly would be more difficult, but Emma would do her best.
She
