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‘And your bed was comfortable?’
‘Very.’
‘You were not disturbed by any noises in the night?’
She gave him a sideways look to determine where this line of questioning might be leading. ‘No, I certainly was not. Why, as soon as my head hits the pillow I am generally asleep and stay so until the morning.’
‘You are most fortunate, then.’
‘You do not sleep well?’
‘I don’t.’ He raised his cup of coffee to his lips and peered at her over the rim. When his eyes locked on to hers, it was she who looked away, making much of buttering her toast. He might suspect her, but that was all. And tonight, forewarned of his lightness of sleep, she would be far more careful in her searching.
‘I was planning a ride across the fields of Falder. Would you like to accompany me? Lucy has a spare riding skirt and jacket and you will find anything else you need in the room off the stables.’
‘I’m not certain. It has been a long time since I was on a horse.’
‘We will go slowly, Lady Emma.’
Emerald frowned, for beneath the outward affinity there was a look that held a hint of something much darker. A rage kept only in check by a steel-strong will. She tried to keep the conversation light.
‘Lucinda said your mother resides here in Falder but I have yet to meet her. She also said that the Dowager Duchess enjoys keeping bad health.’
He smiled at that, the white of his teeth startling against the tan on his face.
‘That she does. Lucinda surprises me sometimes with her insights into others. Take your cousin for instance.’ A gleam of something she could not quite interpret danced in his eyes. ‘Liam Kingston. She saw him as an honourable man. A man who would not lie. A trait of character to be commended in a person, would you not say?’
‘Indeed, I would.’ She hoped he did not hear the waver in her voice.
‘Indeed, you would,’ he repeated and lifted a silver knife to take jam from the pot before him. He used his left hand for almost everything, she noted. Writing. Smoking. Eating. The hand that was not ruined.
Her mind went back to the day they had boarded his ship and she took in a short breath. He had once been right-handed. She was certain of it. The enormity of the realisation made her stiffen. When had the accident happened? Lord, not straight after she had toppled him overboard? Surely not right then.
‘My family is extremely important to me, Lady Emma, and as the head of the house it is my duty to see that they remain safe.’
‘I see.’ The beat of her heart was twice its normal speed and rising.
‘I’m glad that you do.’ The smile that he gave her did not reach his eyes.
‘Good morning.’
Lucinda’s voice had Emerald turning in relief. Asher’s questions had an edge to them that she didn’t understand—it was as if he was furious at her. An awful thought surfaced. Could he have seen her last night? She had heard a noise as she had left the small room off the library, though she was certain that if he had seen her she would hardly be sitting here and being served a very substantial breakfast. With growing unease she looked across at Lucy.
Today Asher’s sister was dressed in a deep-blue riding habit and had a wide smile on her face. A complete and utter contrast to her own, she supposed, and was unreasonably tired by such innocence and openness.
Petty, she knew, and belittling to honour. Taking a breath, she tried to rally.
‘Are you joining us for breakfast, Lucy?’ Asher asked as he pushed out a chair for his sister.
‘No, I have already eaten. Taris said you would be going into the village this morning and I thought to ride with you, for I am spending the day with Rodney and Annabelle Graveson. Will you be leaving soon?’
‘As soon as we have breakfasted.’
The cold lash of his eyes gave Emerald the feeling that he was ordering her to go with him for this had nothing to do with choice. Swallowing her gall, she squared her shoulders and faced Lucy. If the Duke of Carisbrook meant to confront her, she would rather the scene take place away from Falder. ‘Your brother mentioned a riding habit of yours that I might use?’
‘Of course. Come with me now and we can find it—I have just the colour to go with your hair. Dark green—have you ever worn that colour? You tend more to the pastels, you see, and I thought really the deeper shades might just suit you better. The tone of your hair is unusual. Not quite blonde, but not red either. Do you take after your mother?’
Shaking her head at all the questions, Emerald followed Lucy from the room, glad to have a genuine reason to leave.
An hour later they were wending their way into Thornfield. After a shaky start Emerald had picked up her old skills in riding and was enjoying the freedom of being on horseback. Lucinda beside her chatted about her childhood; in front of them Taris rode a little further back from his brother. She could see how he concentrated on the path before him and on the sounds of the horse’s hooves upon the road. Lucy sometimes called out to him, warning him of an incline or of a particularly deep ditch.
Asher gave him nothing. No help. No leeway. She wondered what it was Taris had been doing off the coast of the Caribbean when he had lost his sight.
Thornfield was beautiful. A village set beside the sea with a main road sporting a number of shops and many well-built houses, round a deep harbour where a ship was moored.
As Asher dismounted and helped his sister down, Emerald was already fastening the reins of her horse and looking towards the ship.
‘It is yours?’
‘Ours,’ he amended. ‘She’s the Nautilus, built for the Eastern Line and due out to India at the end of the month to fill a silk contract we have in Calcutta.’
‘She’s beautiful. What does she draw?’
‘You know something about ships?’
Cursing her slip, she lied easily. ‘Liam was always interested in ships, so I suppose some of his knowledge must have rubbed off on to me.’ Deliberately she turned away from the harbour and perused the inn, glad that the brim on the hat she wore was wide, for she doubted she could have hidden the longing she was consumed with.
To set foot on a ship again. To ride in the winds of a wide-open sea with the smell of salt and adventure close to the bone. To climb up the rigging of an eighty-foot mast and hang suspended against the blueness of a horizon that stretched for ever.
A voice calling to them brought her from her thoughts and she looked around to see a man hurrying forward.
‘I had hoped to see you here today, your Grace,’ he said when he was upon them. ‘There was a break-in on the Nautilus last night, though from what I can gather nothing was taken. But the lock on the main cabin door was forced and a few papers shifted.’
‘Did anyone see anything untoward?’
‘No, nothing. Davis heard noises after midnight and thought it was me checking on the ropes.’
‘Set a double shift tonight, then,’ Asher ordered, ‘and have Silas bring his dog back on board.’
Emerald stiffened as his eyes raked across her and again she felt some sense of complicity and an uncertainty that was hard to pin down. Had Azziz and Toro frisked the ship already? It could well be possible. She had determined to contact them tonight and let them know of the new plans Asher Wellingham had set in place to guard his ship when the arrival of a beautifully dressed woman in her forties made her turn. At her side there walked a boy, his eyes firmly fixed on Lucinda.
‘I didn’t realise that you would be up for the week, Asher.’ The woman smiled, looking at Emerald and waiting for an introduction.
‘Lady Emma Seaton, meet Lady Annabelle Graveson and her son, Rodney. Emma is newly come to London to stay with her aunt, the Countess of Haversham.’
‘Miriam of Haversham?’ Her glance sharpened on the locket around Emerald’s neck; if she had been pale before, now she was even more so.
‘You are her niece?’ Her fingers pulled at the lace around her collar before her eyes rolled up and she fell into the arms of Asher Wellingham.
Again, Emerald thought.
How tiring it must be to for ever have collapsing women swoon around you. This faint, however, hardly looked like the one she had pretended in the Henshaw ballroom. It was obvious that Annabelle Graveson was truly ill for her face had taken on a greenish-grey pallor and sweat covered her brow.
Asher Wellingham hardly seemed fazed as he lifted the woman up effortlessly and led the small contingent into the inn, where a space was cleared on a cushioned seat.
‘Fetch some water and give us some room,’ he ordered and the innkeeper wasted no time in doing as he was bid.
Rodney stood at the foot of his mother’s makeshift bed. ‘She said that she felt ill this morning, but I didn’t think she meant this ill.’ Emerald noticed Lucy’s hand resting on his shoulder, trying to give him comfort and almost laughed.
This ill?
The woman was probably just hot or the stays binding her stick-thin waist were too tight. Already she was coming to. She thought back to the aftermath of battles aboard the Mariposa when sailors had sat in silence against the bulwarks and nursed broken bones. Or worse.
But this was England, she reminded herself, where a faint still retained an important place in the whole scheme of things. A vivid reminder of the place of fragile women.
She watched as the woman sat herself up and wiped her brow and upper lip with a delicate hanky she had extracted from the sleeve at her wrist.
‘Oh, my goodness,’ she said, repeating it over again as she looked around the group. ‘I said to Rodney this morning that I was not feeling up to a jaunt into the village. My stomach, you understand. It is rather unpredictable and yesterday the cook served a strong soup that I can only surmise was badly made. Old meat, if I were to hazard a guess, or fungi plucked from a place it should not have been. Rodney, where are you?’
‘I am here, Mama.’ He did not move and Emerald looked away when she perceived that both Annabelle Graveson and her son were watching her, their blue eyes a mirror copy of each other’s.
Asher, as usual, had taken charge, ordering large platters of food and wine and making certain that Taris was aware of the fare that was placed before him. Glancing across the room, she saw a group of young men looking her way, but the scorching glance of the Duke of Carisbrook discouraged them.
She almost smiled. How easy it must be to slip into the role of a protected woman.
How simply easy.
Lucinda. Annabelle Graveson. They let him take charge without even noticing what they had given up.
‘Are you at Falder for long, Lady Emma?’ Rodney Graveson was sitting on her left side, next to Lucinda.
‘For a week. My aunt, the Countess of Haversham, is here, too, but she has been laid low by a cough and has taken to her bed. Perhaps you know of her—your mother seems to.’
‘Mama seldom travels outside of Thornfield these days, but I have heard her mention that name.’
He blushed, his fair hair standing out against the colour, but he did not look away and Emerald liked him for it. Once, years ago, she too had been cursed with such shyness and Rodney Graveson seemed like a kindred spirit and in desperate need of friendship. Looking up, she caught Annabelle Graveson watching her.
‘What is it you are speaking of with Lady Emma, Rodney?’ Her voice was high and the colour in her cheeks was better.
‘He was just asking me how long I planned to be here for, Lady Annabelle.’
‘Oh, I see. And your answer?’
‘Seven days, I think.’
‘Then we shall have you over to Longacres for dinner next Sunday. Asher will bring you. About six.’
She did not ask the others at the table, which struck Emerald as both odd and rather impolite, and the Duke of Carisbrook’s perfunctory nod was such that she wondered if he meant to honour the invitation at all, but as she felt the squeeze of Rodney Graveson’s hand against her own beneath the table she was touched by his gesture and hoped that it would be possible to go.
Two hours later, after saying goodbye to the others Emerald sat on Hercules and picked her way down the incline behind Asher Wellingham on his tall black stallion. Lucy had stayed in Thornfield with the Gravesons and Taris had met a friend at the tavern and had decided to embark on a game of chess. Emerald wondered whether the whole thing had been a set-up, for Asher Wellingham seemed very keen on riding back with her and left as soon as the first opportunity presented itself. She also wondered as to the propriety of being alone with him, but dismissed that notion with indifference. Her reputation here was unimportant—she would be gone from England as soon as she found the cane.
The sea lay before them and, licking her lips, she could taste the salt. Here the sand was not fine and white, but grey and coarse, the pebbles mulched by the movement of this lonely, lovely coast. The sea. Her heart sang at the joy of being beside it again. If this was my home, she thought, I should never leave it.
After the warning at breakfast Asher Wellingham had seemed withdrawn and quiet. He did not tarry or offer her any explanation of beaches, cliffs or field.
His land, she thought.
If he loved Falder, it was not obvious.
‘What is the peninsula in the distance?’ she asked as the sun lit up a long low tongue of land to their left.
‘The Eddington Finger,’ he said promptly. ‘Though my great-great-grandfather always called it “Return Home Bay.” The last sight of Falder lands as he left the coast, I suppose. He was a sailor with a love for adventure.’
He stopped as they cantered down on to the sand and dismounted and the image of an old duke naming the place made Emerald laugh.
‘What was his name? Your great-great-grandfather’s name,’ she qualified when he looked puzzled.
‘Ashland. My father was Ashborne and his father Ashton, all derivatives of the original family name of Ashalan. It is tradition.’
‘Tradition.’ Longing welled on her face. She was certain he must have seen it and was surprised when he smiled. It made him look younger, as young as he had looked on his ship off Turks Island with the sea winds at his back. As young as the man staring out from the portrait in the small salon with a loving wife on his arm.
Desire snaked through caution and she was shocked by the heavy hammering of her heart. She, who had been around men all her life. Handsome men. Dangerous men. But none like this one. None who had haunted her dreams for five long years with his velvet eyes and night-black hair. None who spoke of a family name that they could trace back through the generations and whose ancestral seat rivalled that of any lord of the realm.
Responsibility and place.
A combination that became all the more appealing with the land of his birth at his back and the full blue day upon his face. Her own shifting lifestyle completed the equation. What must it be like to have your children run in the same fields as their children and their children’s children? Oh, tradition was sweet when you had never had it.
The silence between them stretched in an endless vacuum as he helped her dismount and she felt a breathless shiver of wonder. Did he feel it too? How could he not? She was shocked at her thoughts, shocked at the sheer bald desire for his touch. Schooling herself to wait as he tethered the horses to a branch, she was surprised at his first question.
‘What were you doing in the blue salon last night, Lady Emma?’
‘Last night?’ She hoped the slight catch in her voice would be interpreted as chagrin rather than the bone-deep fear she was suddenly consumed with.
‘Last night when you slipped through the rooms of my house in the guise of one suspiciously similar to the description my sister gave of Liam Kingston.’ He was very still.
‘I am not certain what you mean.’ With her back against the wall she couldn’t afford to give an inch.
He changed tack, easily. Distrust coated his words and was seen in the hard planes of his face. ‘What is it you want from me?’
‘Want from you? Nothing, your Grace. And there is a simple explanation for last night. I have never slept well since my father’s passing. Sometimes in the dead of night I wander …’
‘Dressed as a boy and moving in and out of the house like a shadow. I think not.’
One hand encircled her wrist and she felt the same bolt of awareness that she was almost becoming used to in his company.
‘Are you a thief?’ he asked quietly, his thumb caressing the sensitive skin at her wrist.
‘No.’ The touch of his breath across the sensitive folds of her neck nearly undid her.
