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“I haven’t visited in a long time,” he murmured at her searching glance.
“Is it occupied?”
“No…I bought it and have maintained it since.”
Surprise shafted through her. “Why?”
His shoulder stiffened before his posture once more relaxed. “It is the only place where I see my parents. My father…my father was the second son, and he had fallen out of favor with his family for marrying my mother, and even for having the ambition of being a doctor. The first time I saw Glenhaven Manor, my country seat in Kent, it seized my breath. There are over two hundred rooms, and it sits among thousands of acres. There is a gallery of family paintings, and only one shows my father when he was a lad of about twelve. It was as if he was eradicated.”
“How awful,” she breathed, suddenly wishing she had been there for him while he navigated a world that must have been so new and unsettling.
He gently steered the boat toward the next gangplank, and they lowered their oars. Elliot efficiently tied up the boat and assisted her out. The humble but well-tended house loomed over a small hill.
“In those early days, I would come back here often and just sit in the dark in the parlor. Sometimes I would stay for a few days and then return to London or wherever my grandmother thought I needed to be to learn how to be a duke.”
A gust of wind swept over the land, and she pressed her hand atop her head to keep her bonnet in place, while the other gripped her walking cane.
“I’ve heard of the dowager duchess. She is said to be fearsome and terribly influential. It is said even Beau Brummel feared her, before his exile of course,” Emma said with a light laugh.
“A veritable dragon,” Elliot said with an undertone of admiration.
Emma gasped as he swung her into his arms and started along the path which inclined over the small hill. The pleasure of him holding her was too great, and the awareness she would like to be in his arms forever surged through her heart.
The surrounding gardens which his mother had been proud of, burst with wild beauty. He lowered Emma to her feet at the top of the hill, his hands ran lightly over her sides, lingering just beneath her arms. They glanced down at the cottage.
She glanced up at him. “Would you like to go inside?”
He touched her face fleetingly, his finger leaving a trail of warmth across her cheek. “Will you come with me?”
That brief intimate touched left her flustered and too aware of the man standing before her, looking at her with such tenderness. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, and his gaze sharpened on that telling action.
“I…”
“I won’t bite,” he said with some amusement, his golden eyes so watchful.
Huffing, she grabbed her cane and walked carefully down the incline, ignoring his soft laughter. At times she bent and inhaled the fragrance of several flowers—jasmine, hyacinth, lilies, and daffodils. The countryside during springtime was her favorite time of the year.
They made their way toward the cottage door, and he inserted an iron key into the lock. The door was pushed open, and he stepped back so she could precede him inside. Emma stepped across the threshold and faltered. Nothing had changed. The striped wallpaper which decorated the walls of the hallway and the patterning of trellised roses in the parlor was the same as she remembered. Everything was as it had been when Elliot’s father had been alive although perhaps a little better cleaned and maintained. She ambled toward the ajar door of the small but tastefully furnished parlor and smiled. Even here had been preserved, and a fire was already lit. It was a cozy room, functional and without pretension to grandeur. The mantel held a few cheerful pottery ornaments, such as could be picked up for sixpence at a country fair.
“There is someone here?”
“I sent word I was coming down, but we are alone.”
She fa
ced him. “I cannot help but feel you wanted me to come here with you today.”
“I did.”
“I wonder what you would have done had I refused to row with you,” she said teasingly, not liking the shaken feeling low in her stomach.
“I confess I wanted privacy, but if you had refused, we would have had this conversation back at Bellview manor.”
“You have me at a disadvantage, for what do you require privacy?”
Piercing eyes regarded her thoughtfully. He dipped his hands into his inner breast pocket of his jacket and withdrew the delicate eye mask she had worn to Lady Waverly’s masquerade ball. “You left this.”
How effortlessly he destroyed her. Her defenses had been laid bare and the considerable ease at which he had done it made her itch to slap his face. Emma had not even realized sometime throughout their long night she had lost it. She allowed a small unaffected smile to curve her lips. It felt like the hardest thing she had ever done in her life. “And you ventured all this way to deliver this to me? Unnecessary but curious.”
