His sister looked at him disapprovingly. “I tried to persuade Harriet and Nigel to take the boy to Italy with them this winter,” she said, “but they would not. He would doubtless interfere with their pleasures. But I would not send him back to school after Christmas. He is about the house somewhere. I could not find him to come to tea. He has no appetite, poor boy. You may remove the tray now, Emily, dear.”
Roger waited for two minutes before getting to his feet. “I’ll go in search of Jasper,” he said. “I’ll see if he has forgiven me for the thrashing I gave him last summer when he cut the white tassels off my Hessians.”
“You ought not to have done that,” Lady Copeland said. “The boy is delicate. Besides, Harriet had a fit of the vapors that lasted all of an hour. And then she had the migraines for two days.”
Roger grinned and left the room.
“Gone to look for Jasper!” Lord Westbury said scornfully. “Does he think we were born yesterday, Adeline? I would look to that little girl of yours, if I were you.”
“Emily?” his sister said. “She is too shy by half, Stanley. She could be a beauty if she would allow herself to be. And she seemed to be a girl of some spirit when she was in the country. I believe she finds it lowering that her father is impoverished and she must take employment. Poor dear. I have hopes of finding her a husband one of these days.”
“Roger won’t have matrimony on his mind,” her brother said. “Not with someone’s companion, Adeline.”
“If he grows troublesome,” Lady Copeland said, “I shall give him a sharp setdown, Stanley. Or perhaps Emily will prove to have more spirit than she has shown thus far in my employ. She is quite a dear girl, I do assure you.”
Emily Richmond took the tea tray to the kitchen and paused to commend the cook on the little currant cakes that had been on it. Then she had to wait, smiling, while the cook explained to her at great length how her grandmother had passed the recipe on to her mother and how her mother had passed it on to her.
Emily did not chafe at the delay. She did not mind her employer’s company. She could sit cheerfully through a whole day alone with Lady Copeland when it was necessary to do so. But she hated it when there were visitors. Always she was introduced as Lady Copeland’s companion—her employee, that was. She never knew quite how to behave.
She had refused two offers of marriage from two perfectly worthy gentlemen at home before Papa had finally taken her aside and explained gently to her that with three other daughters and four sons all growing up behind her, he could not afford to take or send her anyplace where she was likely to meet a suitor to her liking. Papa had not reproached her for refusing those offers, but she had felt mortified and penitent. If she had only known!
She must have been incredibly naive not to know, since their neighbors the Copelands obviously did. Lady Copeland asked for her companionship to Bath just a couple of weeks after Papa had had his talk with her. And though she had been very tactful and had made it seem that Emily would be doing her a favor by going, it was very clear that it was employment that was being offered. There was an “allowance” involved—pay for services rendered.
Emily had accepted, though Papa had assured her that things were not at such a bad pass that she needed to enter service.
She had come to Bath determined to find herself a husband just as soon as possible. And she was not going to be as foolish as she had used to be, looking for love, that special something that all girls dreamed of. Respectability would be enough.
Perhaps Mr. Harris would be the one. He made a point of greeting Lady Copeland at the Pump Room almost every morning, though Emily always suspected that it was she who really drew him. He was an amiable gentleman, no older than forty, if that old, and perfectly respectable, if a little dull.
She would not aim high. Though her father was a baronet, he had committed the unpardonable crime of becoming impoverished. And she herself was in employment. She could certainly not aim for someone like the Honorable Mr. Roger Bradshaw, for example, though he had looked at her a few minutes before with definite interest and though her heart had quite turned over within her under his scrutiny.
He was a man to be despised, anyway. He had been sent away from London by his father to avoid scandal. He had been caught in bed with another man’s wife. What sort of a man must he be?
She was walking from the back stairs along the dark hallway beside the main staircase, her eyes lowered to the tiles, when she became aware that someone was ahead of her. When she raised her head, it was to find the object of her disapproving thoughts coming toward her. He met her beneath the bend of the stairs.
“It was a large tray,” he said. “I’m sorry that I am too late to help you with it.”
He had a way of looking very directly at a person, Emily thought, as if he saw far into her soul. And he stood just a little too close for comfort. She resisted the urge to take a step back.
“It was not heavy,” she said.
She had never known a flirt. She had only ever had experience of earnest and straightforward gentry and tenant farmers. This man was a flirt, she knew instinctively, and he had come to flirt with her. Her heart fluttered at the same time as she recognized exactly why he did so.
“Miss Richmond,” he said, smiling slowly at her— without a doubt, he knew what effect crinkled eyes and white teeth had on the female sex—“I am new to Bath. What does one do here for entertainment?”
Emily’s heart began to beat up into her throat. She had always thought the idea of eyes dancing was a silly one. But his eyes danced. “There is the Pump Room,” she said. “And there are the Assembly Rooms and the shops and the abbey and private concerts. And Sydney Gardens when the weather is not too cold.”
Had he moved? She had not seen him do so. But he must have, because that backward step could no longer be avoided. Except that somehow she must have stepped sideways instead of back, because the slope of the stairs was now at her shoulder. She was in the shadows beneath the stairs and he was blocking the way back into the open hallway.
“And which places do you frequent?” he asked her. “What would you recommend?”
No, she would not become silly or fluttery or show him in any way that he had discomposed her. She looked him calmly in the eye and willed the breathlessness from her voice. “Lady Copeland likes to spend an hour in the Pump Room each morning,” she said, “and some time strolling on the Crescent in the afternoon if the weather is good. She likes to take tea at the Assembly Rooms during the evenings.”
His lips twitched. They were very sensuous lips, she thought, and then realized with dismay that she was staring at them. They were disturbingly close. He had placed one hand flat against the wall beside her head. His voice was low when he spoke—but then it was only a few inches from her ear.
“I shall have to develop a taste for the waters and for early mornings, then,” he said, “starting tomorrow. And for strolling and sipping tea.”
His eyes on hers were very disturbing, but they became even more so when they looked up to her hair and down to her mouth.
