Page 8 of Christmas Wore Plaid

Her eyes widened at the wistful recognition. So he does remember you. It had been seven years, and after the second year of silence in response to each letter she sent, she’d accepted that Brady’s childhood kiss and declaration of marriage had meant nothing. Her uncle’s sequestering had turned into a lifetime. After the third year, she’d accepted Corbin’s proposal. They’d courted for another year until their wedding.

She felt her cheeks blush red. Illness had ruined everything, and she tried futilely to suppress her reminiscence of the trauma. No one had been allowed near her, and the first weeks of the illness were a blur of pain and delirium. A mix of raging fever, followed by thirst and vomiting she’d been certain would kill her if the scarlet fever didn’t. She barely remembered the journey to Apple Grove, where the illness finally broke and her constitution was restored over the following months. She would never feel normal like she once had, and she trembled now, wavering, and feeling the need to brace herself on a lamppost. Still, she had been given a wonderful life. She had much to be grateful for.

She swallowed. That childhood ache throbbed to life again. Even if her affection for Brady had dulled over time, there was no mistaking how sweet on Brady she had once been.

“We were married for barely three months before I was widowed,” she replied.

His dead expression softened. Regret settled heavily on his brow. “Why? Didn’t you know I fancied you?”

She scoffed accusingly. “Indeed it was hard to tell.”

His brow knitted. “How much more did a lad need to pour out his heart to convince you?”

“Maybe if you’d written just one of those letters you promised to pen, I would have had some assurances,” she replied, ignoring the curious confusion transforming his expression. “But alas, you never sent a single one—”

“A lie,” Brady growled, stepping closer to loom over her. “I wrote every week for a year, every—bloody—week, when I finally inquired with your aunt as to whether or nay you were well, because I’d gotten no word from you.” Emerson shook her head in disbelief, but he continued. “Lady Bess said you were fine and flourishing in Oxford, and that your uncle thought it best to keep you there, and that perhaps I should stop writing to you. So I assumed…” He trailed off, the hurt on his face firming to hardness.

Confusion scrambled her thoughts. “I maintain I never received a single letter, even though I wrote to you time and again. I couldn’t bear to think that your promises meant nothing, but I finally accepted that you were no longer interested in me—you’d only been interested in my kiss and saying whatever needs be said to steal it. And then I learned of your courtship”—she cut herself short.

“What?” Brady’s brow twisted with more confusion. “Who would have told you such a thing?”

“Wishing to keep it a secret from me?” Emerson asked. She shook her head. “I accepted Corbin’s proposal without argument after that, for why beg for your attention when you’d clearly chosen another?”

And yet, something was amiss. Brady, growling a moment ago, seemed speechless now. Why he was, Emerson couldn’t tell, but exhaustion was beginning to take its toll, and the anger she rarely allowed license in her heart was frustrating her.

She felt the little girl’s hand encased in hers, and softly continued so as not to frighten her.

“My uncle asked it of me, for Corbin was the son of his partner and I no longer saw a future for us. We were so young, I just assumed you had grown and pursued other interests.”

“W-were you in love with him?” Brady stammered.

She felt her other hand slide over her stomach, protecting her womb and the loss that would always lurk there.

“I loved him,” she resolved herself to say. “As a friend, and as a good man.”

Brady swallowed. She saw the muscles working in his jaw as he fought to hold his tongue.

“Why did you leave the churchyard just now?” she asked.

His hard gaze finally faltered and he turned to watch the carts roll by on the high street as those ignoring the Sabbath—like he was—went about their business. “I didn’t recognize you with your bonnet covering your eyes. At mention of your aunt, I finally did.”

“And you wished not to see me?”

His rudeness hurt. Seeing Brady MacInnes again had been on her mind her entire trip north, even if she feared finding him happily married. But a tiny, lingering hope had remained that if he were unattached still, a romance, like the one she knew had been budding when they were young, would bud again, even if that hope was childish. It was wrong to think ill of the dead, and she didn’t think ill of Corbin. But she’d not been in love with him. Corbin was practical and measured. He never would have impulsively climbed to her window to steal kisses. He’d frowned upon coeducational schools, believing that they undermined the natural division between the sexes. He’d frowned upon the theatre, convinced that professional actors were little better than high class whores. He was straight-laced and proprietary, completing his barrister pupillage, wealthy. But he had been attentive and kind. She’d been content.

She didn’t want to dwell on Corbin Pritchard’s weak heart, the cause of his death. Already he’d defied death for years beyond what the doctors had expected. The son of her Uncle Frederick’s partner, Corbin Pritchard had been an ambitious man. Her uncle had arranged her marriage and asked her to agree to it. She was grateful for her family raising her, since her own parents had perished when she was a babe. Knowing they had financed her to ensure her security instead of relinquishing her to the orphanages, compelled her to accept Corbin’s betrothal and ensuing courtship without complaint, even if Emerson had always harbored a secret curiosity about what had become of Brady. Now, as she gazed at the hurt and sincerity in Brady’s eyes after so long, she wondered what could have been had things been different. He said he’d written letters, which had to be a lie, for she’d never received a single one.

She looked down at the little girl again. The wave of fatigue that always overcame her when she exerted herself finally defeated her resolve to stand tall, and she buckled against the streetlamp. Please do not faint. Please do not faint! Brady lunged out, grabbing her before she fell to the pavement, but her vision was going black and her sadness over her dead babe and her aloneness in the world fought to drag her down. What she would have done to have kept her child, lost after Corbin’s passing. Did Brady know she’d lost a child, too? Had he heard the sad news that her daughter had been born blue with a weak heart like her father’s?

The loss had dulled since her tragic delivery. Now that she had finished mourning, her aunt had died. And here she was, returned home to sell her aunt’s property. If she did admit it, she’d wanted to reconnect with the world she had left at the impressionable age of fourteen, although judging from the poverty around her, she’d never really known the real Crieff. Bess had taught her to be charitable and Emerson had made that philanthropy her own mission with many charitable endeavors in the south, but her aunt had sheltered her.

As the spots and memories cleared from her blackening vision, she felt Brady’s steady embrace holding her against his chest. So warm, so strong. Her stomach fluttered to life with a hundred butterflies. She looked up to see that his hard resolve had fractured, replaced by concern.

“Emerson? What ails you, lass?”

She blinked again, willing her sight to clear.

“I’m fine. I just…goodness, I don’t mean to swoon.”