Lucien opened his eyes and lowered his hand. His wife was giving him a hard, intransigent look, and it dawned on him then that she really didn’t have any idea how dangerous these ideas were that she was introducing to his sisters.
She was a sheltered girl who had never spent a Season in London. She didn’t know what his sisters would face once they were out on the marriage mart, the competition they would be up against. Competition where one wrong move could ensure they never had a chance to find husbands.
“Emery, I would like to see you in my study,” he said, his voice coming out flat and cold. He glanced at his sisters and then the puppies. “Alone.”
He turned and swept back down the staircase toward his study. At the bottom of the stairs, he turned to make sure Emery was following him, then continued on to his study. There, he opened the door and paused, waiting for her. She arrived more slowly, looking up at him with a strange expression on her face as she walked past him and into the room. Then he followed her inside and closed the door with a snap.
“That was very dramatic,” she remarked, sitting down at the chair in front of his desk without waiting for his invitation. “Was it really necessary to call me in here like that?”
“It was,” he said curtly, rounding the edge of the desk and then seating himself across from her in his leather, wingback chair.
She smirked at him and crossed his arms. “Why? Am I in for a scolding?”
He stared at her, uncomprehending. “Is life just one long joke to you?” he asked. “Do you think that one can get away withwhatever they want and never have to face the consequences of their actions?”
His wife blinked, and the smirk on her face vanished. “Of course I don’t think that,” she said, and there was surprise--and even genuine hurt--in her tone. “I am currently living with the consequences of both our actions. I am currently married to a man who despises me and yet still trying very hard to make the best of a bad situation.”
“Well you’re not making it better!” he snapped. “You are undoing years of work! Years of careful guidance and etiquette training that I have given my sisters in order to ensure that they are the most accomplished, and unimpeachable young ladies--young ladies who are able to have their pick of any gentlemen and therefore secure the best possible futures. And you are ruining that! You are undoing all that work with your relentless pursuit of what isfun! Life is not fun, Emery. Life is hard and full of disappointment and challenges. And the sooner you accept that, the happier you will be.”
“I know that life isn’t only fun,” she said, her voice low now, and husky. “Our marriage is living proof of that.”
“Then why are you determined to undermine me and take the girls on these escapades that will only fill their heads with notions that they should spend their days having fun instead of doing their duty?”
Emery stared at him, slightly open-mouthed. “Because I like them very much and I want them to enjoy their lives,” she said at last. “I don’t understand why that is so offensive to you!”
“Because people who prioritize enjoying their lives shirk their duties and end up making bad choices!”
“Not necessarily!”
“Is that so?” Lucien’s eye had just caught on a piece of paper that the butler must have put on his desk--a piece of paper that looked very much like a bill. Frowning, Lucien pulled the paper closer and swept his eyes over it. As he did, he felt his stomach lurch.
A wave of cold passed over him, and for a moment, he didn’t move; he was frozen with both shock and vindication. Of all the things to find at this moment… the perfect proof of everything he’d just been saying.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked, holding up the bill.
Emery frowned at it and shook her head.
“It’s a bill that I seem to have just received from the modiste in town. In it, I see that I am paying not for one new gown, but for three new gowns--and not your run-of-the-mill, standard dresses that ladies are in need of, but three of the most expensive gowns I have ever heard of.”
His wife, he was pleased to see, had gone very pale. “But… You told me to take Leah to the modiste,” she said weakly. “I was just doing as you asked.”
“I said that once we were in London, then perhaps then you could accompany her to the modiste. I did not, however, tell you to go there the moment you moved into this house and spend a small fortune onthreegowns! How could she even need that many?”
“They weren’t all for her,” Emery said at once. “The other two were for Eve and Celeste.”
Lucien felt as if his stomach had dropped out of him.Two of the most expensive gowns imaginable for girls who are not even out yet?! What was she thinking?
All the anger inside of him felt as if it were about to explode. It had been a week since the wedding--a week of feeling angry at his brother, at Emery, at himself--a week of being stuck in Cornwall because of the rain, then stuck on the road, and now to be back home, drenched and cold, hungry and exhausted, and to hear that she had blown that much money on dresses?!
It was almost more than he could take.
“That was more than a third of Leah’s entire budget for the Season,” Lucien heard himself saying. His emotions were all over the place, and he knew that he couldn’t keep it together any longer. It no longer mattered what was and wasn’t appropriate to discuss in front of a lady. “You’ve used up a whole third!” heshouted, and she flinched slightly at the volume and force of his words. “What am I supposed to tell Leah now? That she isn’t to have any more new clothes for the Season?”
“I-I’m sorry,” Emery stammered. She was as white as a sheet and staring at him with wide eyes. “I d-didn’t know.”
“No, you didn’t! But you didn’t ask or think about it beforehand. You just spent all the money you wanted on frivolous things because you wanted to havefun. Because you think life is to be enjoyed, instead of to be taken seriously. Well, because of you, the financial ruin that I saved my family from these last few years is once more a threat. That is two years’ of savings down the drain in one shopping spree!”
Lucien found he couldn’t go on, anger and pain making it impossible for him to articulate himself, and a ringing silence filled the study. He put his head in his hands and breathed in deeply, trying to calm the hammering of his heart. A minute or two passed in silence, until Lucien felt as if he could speak calmly again. He looked up then, only to see that his wife was watching him carefully.
