contract was already sealed and money had changed hands.
The sound of the door cracking closed as Jarrett Dashwood left started Emma from her miserable memories.
‘Well, miss, you’ve done your work well!’ was hissed shrilly at her. ‘Do you know what awaits us all now? Your spurned suitor has just promised your father an indefinite sojourn in the Fleet…and for us an indefinite sojourn in the nearest gutter. We are ruined…finished!’
‘Mama, how could you consider turning me over to such an odious individual?’ was Emma’s broken, soft rejoinder. ‘A marriage I would have agreed to. But you must allow me a man of my own choosing: someone I can at least respect, if not love. You know of Dashwood’s reputation…assuredly better than I. He is reviled as a slave-master…and a whore-master. Yet you would force me to live my remaining years with him?’
‘Some of the noblest, richest families in the land are built out of Jamaica, and have philanderers at their head. Are you to find fault with all of those too?’ her mother impatiently snapped. ‘You quibble unnecessarily, Emma!’
Margaret’s tone honeyed persuasively. ‘As his wife you would enjoy a life of pampered luxury. He would treat you well: after all, we all know how greatly he believes he has appearances to keep. Why do you think such a man would settle on purchasing himself a sedate spinster? He wants her virtue and gentility and the assurance she is never likely to humiliate him by shamelessly gadding about. Once you had provided his required heir or two, what more use would he make of you? A man so rich has his pick of beautiful courtesans to quench his lust.’ A derisive, summarising stare preceded, ‘You are fortunate to get any offers when you have so little to recommend you. You’re too thin, you’re too old—despite the fact you look like a gauche adolescent with your scrubbed complexion and buttoned-up gown. Even your hair has lost its rich hue as you’ve aged…your eyes too. I swear you’re now all tea when once you were chocolate. Your musical accomplishments, I suppose, are adequate…’ she allowed on a sniff.
‘I hardly think Jarrett Dashwood is to be swayed to stay home by cosy musical evenings about the pianoforte, Mama,’ Emma mentioned on a sour laugh.
‘How fortunate for you! In his absence, you could nestle into domesticity with a child on your lap and one of those soppy romantic novels in your hand.’
An impatient sigh escaped Emma at the ridiculously wholesome imagery. ‘It might not be all so bleak for us, Mama,’ she cajoled. ‘You are right—Mr Dashwood does covet status and respectability. He will never sue Papa for fraud. Papa is known to be ailing. Dashwood would hate being seen as vindictive enough to dun a sick man without conceding him time to make amends. He will allow us a while to repay him…you’ll see.’ Warming to her theme, she enthused, ‘I can work. I am educated well enough to be a governess…or a companion to a wealthy lady…or a housekeeper…’
‘Housekeeper?’ her mother choked, outraged. ‘You have been gently reared! The success of your twenty-fourth-birthday ball was the talk of the ton for months afterwards. Had you deported yourself more…more becomingly to the gentlemen present that evening, you would have been wed these past three years or more and no longer draining us with the expense of your keep.’
As though unable to contain her fury or bitterness, Margaret’s lips and eyes narrowed in exasperation. She approached her daughter on wobbly, stiff legs in the manner of a mechanised rickety toy. As she passed a side-table something caught a glaring eye and she grabbed up the leather-bound volume and looked at it with intense loathing. ‘All this ridiculous daydreaming you do of love and heroes and happy endings…it is a shameful indulgence and not to be borne, Emma.’ She snorted a sour laugh. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged,’ she parodied in a shaking voice, ‘that a wilful, selfish daughter of seven and twenty will prove to be a tiresome burden on her parents. Her presence should no longer be tolerated!’ The volume of Jane Austen’s work was skimmed abruptly towards her, and with chance accuracy smacked a hefty blow on a slender shoulder.
With a moan of recalled pain, Emma Worthington pushed herself upright in bed, her breathing fast and erratic and a pale hand instinctively seeking the tender bruise below her collarbone. Her head drooped forward, thick tan hair coating the sides of her face, as she waited for the pounding of her heart to steady and the vividness of the dream to recede a little.
A hand fumbled out to the unfamiliar table at the side of the alien bed and sought the candle, drawing it close to gain its weak, guttering light. She held it aloft in an unsteady hand. As she shook back tresses from her blanching face, wide, darting eyes surveyed the moon-striped tavern chamber, every gloomy nook scoured for spooks and intruders. But she knew it was nothing other than inner demons that had startled her awake.
The dream had so sharply, so accurately retraced events of two days ago that she might have been back in the drawing room of Rosemary House, facing her mother’s spite and Jarrett Dashwood’s menacing presence.
She drew her knees up close to her body, her slender arms hugged about them for warmth and comfort and she laid a cold shivering cheek atop them. A bar of silver light bathed her bent head as the moon again escaped scudding cloud. It shifted to incorporate her entwined fingers and she stretched them towards the pearlescence. Replacing the candle on the table, she quit the hard bed and padded softly over cold wood to the small leaded window.
A velvet night sky was visible through a net of shimmering nimbus. Her gaze swept the courtyard below. Immediately she shrank back. Her eyes had, by chance, located a courting couple by an outbuilding, their faces and bodies fused together. Compelled by an uncontrollable fascination, Emma slipped back, seeking again the shadowy outline of a tall man and a woman wedged between his sturdy body and the stable brickwork. She whirled away, her face stinging with hot self-disgust, and scrambled back into bed.
Shifting backwards against the crude wooden headboard, she distractedly picked up her book with one hand and the candle with the other. After a few minutes of mindless reading, she accepted that balancing the thin candle-flame this way and that to try and illuminate the pages was a pointless task. Her eyes were strained from deciphering print which seemed to merge into shapes like entwining lovers. Abruptly, she replaced the book and candle on the table and slowly sank down into the bed with a weary sigh.
Turning on her side, she stared wide-eyed and sightless at the perfect full moon as it emerged from cloud. She thought of Matthew and wistfully smiled as she wondered how he would react to her unexpected arrival; after all, they had seen nothing of each other for two years and she was still awaiting a reply to the last letter she had sent to him some six months ago now.
Perhaps it had been undelivered… ‘Please God, don’t let him have moved away,’ she whispered at the silver orb. Doubt and guilt trembled through her as she thought of her parents in Cheapside. Were they anxious? Furious? Remorseful? She should have left a proper note…not just a few lines that begged them not to worry…or to try and find her.
She twisted restlessly on the soft mattress, frowning at shadows on the ceiling, while thinking of unrequited love and a man who had buried his heart with his first wife and of whether she would ever come to love step-children.
‘Not been bit by the bed bugs, I ‘opes,’ the young man said. ‘I seen folks wi’ legs swole up an’ as red as can be from the nasty blighters…’
‘No, I’m quite well, thank you. Just a little tired still.’ Emma responded to his query as to whether she had slept well. ‘You seem very busy today.’ A look through the window indicated the bustling courtyard.
The young potman inclined his dark head to conspiratorially impart, ‘Quality wi’ a queer name turned up late last night. His nibs be travelling on early wiv ‘is
