The Wild Wellingham Brothers. Sophia James
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Nine
They tiptoed around one another at breakfast the next morning with polite smiles and bland words.
‘Is the food to your satisfaction?’
‘Would you mind passing the strawberry jam?’
And beneath it all ran an undercurrent of mounting desperation.
Emerald was glad Taris and Lucy were both at the table.
‘I saw Malcolm Howard yesterday at the Red Lion. He said you had been swimming, Asher, down in Charlton Bay.’
‘I took Artemis for a jog along the sand. Perhaps it was that he meant.’ His voice and eyes gave absolutely nothing away as he reached across the table to help himself to some toast.
Taris changed his tack. ‘Do you swim, Emma?’
‘She does,’ Asher answered for her, brown eyes flinting a warning, and Lucy, who caught neither the amusement of one brother nor the irritation of the other, jumped into the fray.
‘Then you absolutely must teach me, for I have always longed to swim. What do you wear in the water?’
Emerald flushed deep red at the question and bent to cut up the omelette on her plate. ‘The temperature of the water in England is a lot colder than that of Jamaica. If I were to venture in here, it would be merely a case of testing the water to the ankles,’ she said finally when she had her heartbeat in some sort of check. She did not dare to chance a look at Asher.
Lies were one thing when the recipient had no notion of their falseness or otherwise. But Asher had been there. He had seen her, touched her, run his fingers across the bare skin at her shoulder…The heat in her cheeks did not abate and she took in several breaths to at least try to calm herself.
Damn it. She barely recognised this shrinking violet she had suddenly become and Lucy’s puzzled frown only added to her discomfort. Suddenly the day stretching before her seemed indeterminably long. When Asher rose from the table and pushed his chair back, she was glad for it.
‘I will be in Rochcliffe till the evening, Taris, and if I stay the night I will send word. Ladies.’ His glance barely encompassed her and then he was gone, striding darkly through the dining-room portal. The sun slanting in from a nearby window gave the black of his hair a bluish light and highlighted the hard planes of his face.
She was in her bed by the window by ten o’clock that evening after spending an hour or so in the library with Taris, playing chess. Asher’s absence had been a godsend, for under the simple pretext of exploring Falder further she had used the afternoon to search for any sign of her father’s cane. And come away with nothing. Lord, she muttered to herself as she lay on her blankets and looked up at the sky, her time here was running out and, if she did not find the map soon, she had little chance of being invited back.
Where could he have hidden it? Where would she have hidden it?
If Falder had been a smaller home, everything would have been immeasurably less difficult, but with its numerous salons and bedchambers and nooks and crannies it was like a labyrinth, much of it joined through a series of inner passageways that defied reason.
Bolstering the pillows behind her back, she plucked her harmonica from beneath them and began to play, the gentle melody relaxing the strain of the day, and the tunes of Jamaica strangely comforting in the colder climes of Fleetness. Azziz had taught her the ways and whys of the instrument ten years ago on the slow watches of the Mariposa and ever since she had added songs to her repertoire that she could play by heart. Ruby had often sung along and danced to the music in the room they had shared off the Harbour Road in Kingston Town and the squalor of that time still haunted her: the danger, the lack of money, the dreadful yearning for the sea.
Here at Falder everything was easy and beautiful: the house, the furniture, the food and the people. A little money softened the rawness of life and a lot removed it completely. She smiled at her musings and then tensed as she heard footsteps in the corridor outside her room and a knock.
Tucking her hair back behind her ears and donning a nightrobe left in the wardrobe, she opened the door.
Asher stood there, wind-blown hair and drink-bruised eyes, the shadow of a twelve-hour stubble on his jaw. Carefully she edged the material of the sleeves down across her hands.
‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Here? Now?’
‘It should only take a moment.’
‘Very well.’ She was not certain whether to invite him in or not. Granted, she knew enough about the social mores in England to also know that asking an unmarried man into your bedroom was unheard of. But did the rules apply when the same man was also the owner of the house? A refusal might look as if she imagined herself as feminine game or as if she suspected his intentions to be less than honourable. He solved the worry for her by staying on the threshold even as she gestured him to enter.
‘No. I should not come in—’ He stopped, clearly perturbed.
‘Where did you get the tattoo? The butterfly.’
‘Jamaica.’
‘Is it normal there? Normal for the daughter of a devout father?’
‘I think we both know the answer to that question,’ she replied.
‘I would like to hear it from you.’
‘My father was not quite as you may imagine.’
‘What exactly was he like, then?’ His golden gaze flared in the candlelight.
‘He was a man whom life had disappointed.’ Pride kept her from saying more, and she was pleased when he changed the subject.
‘Taris said that you are a fine chess player. It is not often that he loses. To anyone. Where did you learn?
‘On the—’ She stopped, horrified, as she realised what she had been about to say. On the Mariposa. Just like that.
‘An uncle taught me,’ she amended and held her breath as the awkwardness of the moment passed.
‘I thought I heard music before, in here?’
‘You did.’ She brought the harmonica from her pocket and watched a range of emotions play across his face.
Puzzlement. Amusement. Interest.
‘My family likes you, Lady Emma. Every time your name is mentioned, Taris and Lucinda sing your praises and it is not often that my brother waxes lyrical about anyone. Especially these days.’
‘How did he lose his sight?’ She asked the question quietly and was surprised by his sharp expression.
‘An accident that should never have happened. If I hadn’t been—’ He stopped and caught at control, the muscles on the line of his jaw quivering.
‘I do not think he blames you, your Grace.’
He smiled at that and moved back. ‘No, he doesn’t.’ Tight words rising from the depths of despair.
‘But you blame yourself?’
Suddenly everything was crystal clear. His lack of help for Taris on the road to Thornfield. It was not anger at his affliction that held him back, but guilt. Guilt. The sheer knowledge of it made her insides weaken.
Such a complex man and so masculinely vulnerable. She swallowed back her pity, knowing that at this moment he would not want it, and, as if he could read her mind, he stepped away.
‘We are due over at Longacres tomorrow for dinner with the Gravesons. After yesterday, if you would rather cancel, I would quite understand.’
‘No, I would like to go.’
‘If you could be ready at five, then we would be back before midnight.’
The noise of voices from the stairs that joined this floor to the next had