Something shut down behind her eyes as she looked up at him. “No,” she said. “Don’t spoil it. Oh, please don’t spoil it. Don’t let me know that that has been your motive all the time. Please don’t.”
He captured her hands against his chest as she pulled away. “No,” he said, “don’t misunderstand, Emmy. I’m not trying to seduce you. I am ashamed that I ever tried. I would never do it again. Forgive me. I have no business compromising you like this. We had better find my aunt’s coachman and go back inside. Let me call on you during the daytime in a more proper manner. May I?”
“If you wish,” she said, but her eyes were wary.
He could say no more. Not then, when his blood was up. How old was she? Eighteen? Nineteen? It was hard to tell.
He took her hand in his and they said no more until they were back at the doors into the Assembly Rooms. But she pulled back on his hand.
“Please,” she said, looking up at him, not quite meeting his eyes.
He bent his head toward her.
“Please may I have the rose?” she asked.
He took it from his buttonhole and handed it to her without taking his eyes from hers. “I am afraid it is probably somewhat bedraggled,” he said. “And even at its best it was not one fraction as lovely as you, Emmy.”
“Thank you for choosing me as your valentine,” she said, her voice breathless. “It has been the most wonderful night of my life.”
She whisked herself through the doors ahead of him, not even waiting for him or a doorman to open them for her.
She wished he had not said that about calling on her during the daytime, Emily thought, holding the pressed rose carefully on the palm of her hand and touching the bloom lightly with the forefinger of her other hand. If he had not said that, she would not have expected him and the four days since the ball would not have been so long and so dreary.
Not that she had really been expecting him, of course—or not to visit her personally, anyway. But when a person says something like that, one cannot help but expect him, even when one knows that he will not come.
Lady Copeland had been called downstairs by a visitor. And so, left alone for a few minutes, Emily had been unable to resist the urge to take the rose from between the pages of a book and gaze at it. She had spent the last four nights with the book hugged in her arms. And though it had been very embarrassing and very forward of her to ask him for it, she was not sorry she had done so. She had this one memento of the most wonderful night of her life.
She wished she had not told him that, though. It was very gauche of her to have done so, and doubtless had frightened him off even if he really had intended to call on her.
Jasper said he had gone away, disappeared from Bath without a word to anyone. Jasper had followed her about more than usual in the past few days, a look of dejection on his face.
“Are you sad, Em?” he had asked once.
“Sad?” she had said, smiling at him. “Why should I be sad?”
“Because the ball is over,” he had said, “and you don’t have a beau.”
She had laughed at him. “But I had a pleasant evening,” she had said. “That was all I looked for.”
“Are you sorry it wasn’t Mr. Harris?” he had asked, his eyes troubled.
“Gracious, no,” she had said. “It was very obliging of Mr. Bradshaw to have chosen me for his valentine.”
“Besides,” Lady Copeland had added, looking up from the letter she was writing, “I would have been very annoyed if it had turned out to be Mr. Harris. He is a married man.”
She had said no more, and Emily had asked no questions. But she had been shocked again by her own ignorance.
She looked down now at her flower and smiled. At least she had memories. Wonderful memories. She had relived that kiss a thousand times during the past four nights. She had not known a kiss could be like that. She was quite sure that it had been shockingly improper, but it had been very wonderful for all that. She slipped the rose between the pages of her book again as the door opened.
“Ah, how foolish of me,” Lady Copeland said, stopping just inside the door and patting the pocket of her dress. “I left my handkerchief in the salon downstairs. Be so obliging as to fetch it for me, Emily, dear, will you?” Emily got to her feet and smiled. A few moments later she was running lightly down the stairs.
After talking to Lady Copeland, Roger wandered out into the hallway as she went upstairs to send Emily to him. It was deserted.
“Jasper?” he said without raising his voice. “Are you there?”
There was silence for a moment, and then a rustling from behind the aspidistra plant.
“Is it safe to come out?” a voice asked.
