A Regency Duchess's Awakening. Amanda McCabe
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curls. “They say you wept and mopped at his sweated brow.”
“He was too wet from falling in the river to sweat,” Emily muttered. “And I did not weep. Though I was naturally frightened for the poor child.”
“I wouldn’t be too sorry for her—she’s Lord and Lady Hampton’s brat. It seems they’re proclaiming Manning the great hero of the age.”
“Already?” said Emily. “And how do you know that?”
“Amy saw Lady Hampton’s aunt on the way home from the milliner’s. Amy is amazing at discovering information,” Rob said admiringly.
“You mean she is a great gossip,” said Emily.
“Whatever you call it, Sister, it’s immensely useful and one of the many reasons I married her. It would do you good to talk to people yourself more often.”
“Enough of this arguing, you two!” their mother cried. “Emily, tell me what happened immediately.”
Emily quickly related the tale of the child’s rescue—a short version of it, anyway—leaving out most of her own involvement and all her emotions. Even that abbreviated account had her mother sighing.
“What a heroic tale!” she said, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. “How proud our old friend, the late duke, would be. And to think you were there, Emily!”
“So was everyone else, Mama,” Emily protested again.
“But no one else went to his assistance, only you, my dear. And now your name is linked with his.”
“Well done, Em,” Rob said.
“I did nothing at all! He scarcely even noticed me,” Emily said, to no avail.
“Perhaps we should allow you to go to Vauxhall with Miss Thornton and her sister after all,” her mother said. “I wasn’t sure about the outing at first, but such a good deed deserves a reward. And there can be no harm if you are with respectable friends.”
“Really? You are allowing me to go to Vauxhall?” Emily said, astonished. Her mother had hesitated when Emily first relayed Jane’s invitation, but now she seemed quite happy to allow it.
“Of course, my dear. The duke might be there, after all. You must see what you can make of it.”
Emily departed the drawing room soon after, leaving her mother and brother to their happy conversation of the doings in the park and what it might mean. They seemed to think it meant the duke had noticed Emily at last, or some such nonsense.
Once she was safe in the silence of her own chamber, she locked the door and went to stare out the window at the gathering evening. Her room looked down on their tiny back garden and the mews behind. All was quiet now, as everyone was at home preparing for their nights, their parties and dinners and theatre outings. The sky was the palest of pinks, shading slowly into grey.
What was he doing tonight? she wondered. Was he getting ready to go out and enjoy his hero-dom? She hoped he was staying home to rest by a warm fire, as he would surely catch a chill after his—what did he call it? His dunking?
She had a sudden vision of the duke, Nicholas, by his fire, cosy with books and supper on a tray. That was her favourite sort of evening. What if she was there, too? What if she could sit by him as they toasted cheese in the fire and laughed about the follies of gossip? He would reach for her hand and.
“No!” she said aloud, and laughed at her fancies. He did not seem a man to relish a quiet evening at home. Dukes were very busy and always sought after, even ones who weren’t the hero of the day. His family seemed to love parties above all else, dancing and music and jokes.
And yet—yet she had glimpsed something different in him today, ever so briefly. She had known he was brave, of course, always riding hell for leather and racing carriages at Welbourne Manor, swimming in the lake there, climbing the hills. Dancing all night. But today’s bravery was of another sort. He had put himself in danger to save a child, a person unknown to him, without an instant’s hesitation while everyone else fled or froze in horror. As she had.
Only after did he seem at all shaken, as if the true danger to that little girl had only just come to him. And that girl had been most reluctant to part with her rescuer—as all ladies seemed to be with him.
Emily bit at the edge of her thumbnail as she watched the sky slide into indigo twilight. Teaching at Mrs Goddard’s meant that not only did she teach the women writing and French, they taught her things as well. They were careful never to tell lurid tales in her hearing, but she did hear some things. She heard stories of how men, especially wealthy and titled men, were not to be trusted. They used people, particularly women, for selfish ends and discarded them without a care. That was why she worked at Mrs Goddard’s, to help women recover from such terrible experiences. She wanted to help however she could.
The Duke of Manning was about as wealthy and titled as a man could be, and he was the son of a famous libertine, a man who had abandoned his wife, the mother of his heir, and married his mistress as soon as that poor wife died. Yet today Emily had seen not a shred of selfishness or carelessness.
Was it only the rush of the moment that made him act thus? Perhaps tomorrow he would go back to the careless, scandalous ways of the Mannings. Or maybe—maybe that was simply how he really was, deep inside.
Emily was very confused, and she did not like that feeling at all. Maybe her mother was right, and the duke would be at Vauxhall for the masked ball. If she met him in disguise, not as Lady Emily Carroll, perhaps she could glimpse that true self, not just the face he showed society.
It seemed a harebrained scheme at best, but for now it was all she had.
“You’ve been very quiet all day, Nick. Is something amiss?”
“What did you say, Stephen?” Nicholas said. He tore his gaze from the night-dark streets flashing past the carriage window and glanced over at his brother. Stephen was running one of his many ‘lucky charms’ between his fingers, back and forth, and that was seldom a good sign. But maybe Nicholas should find some kind of charm as well. It seemed he needed one.
“I said you are being strangely quiet, which is not like you. Usually no one can get you to shut up.”
Nicholas threw his black satin mask at his brother’s head. Stephen batted it away, laughing, but in the process dropped his charm. Nicholas scooped it up and held it to the moonlight. It was a tiny gold horseshoe, as bright as Emily Carroll’s hair. “I have a great deal to think about, you know.”
“Ducal things, I suppose?”
“Indeed. And if you’re going to twit me about my work, I’d just like to see you take it on. You’re the heir, anyway. You be the duke, and I’ll go off and live on a sunny island somewhere, with no estates to run and no siblings to corral.”
Nicholas closed his fist tightly around the charm. He was being churlish, he knew, and he was sorry for it. It wasn’t Stephen’s fault he was in such a strange mood. He hadn’t been able to shake it away all day. He kept seeing that child, so close to danger, kept reliving it over and over in his mind.
And he kept seeing that look in Emily Carroll’s green eyes as she knelt beside him, so full of horror and shock—and confusion. She had seen him at his worst, damn it all, seen him at his most vulnerable. He didn’t like that, and he couldn’t decipher why that would be.
Stephen sat back on his seat, his hands up in mock surrender. “Certainly not! I have not the least desire to be a duke. It’s a blasted great nuisance, and apparently it makes a man surly as well. And I’m only the heir until you marry and have horrid little Mannings of your own.”
Which would never