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Certainly not with a stranger! She’d had enough of people’s prying and pitying when her mourning clothes displayed her grief for everyone to see, when she had to answer their well-meaning but constant questions about how she was getting along since the accident. She’d had to sit through their head shaking at the struggles and sacrifices she and Emmeline had been forced to make, their comments about how tragic for her to be so young and widowed and for Emmeline to have lost her father, their whispers behind her back when the gossips had learned that Nora’s meager inheritance barely paid for their basic survival. Worse—their looks of horror when they found out that Emmeline had suddenly stopped talking, as if her beautiful little daughter had become some kind of monster.Damn them.
“Excuse me.” Dismissing him, she turned toward the rear of the garden and called out for Emmeline so they could return to Whitwell House where they— Well, they didn’tbelongthere. She wasn’t certain where they belonged these days exactly, but it certainly wasn’t here with this man.
He gently took her arm and stopped her.
She wheeled around to give him the set-down he deserved. But she froze at his expression of genuine concern, one that softened the hard lines of his handsome face.
“Since when?” he asked again, impossibly quieter and even more somber than before.
She swallowed her anger and gazed into the darkness of the garden to make certain Emmeline couldn’t overhear. “Nearly eighteen months ago, when her father died,” she admitted, giving him her confidence, although for the life of her she had no idea why she did. Or why he should want it.
Slowly, he released her arm. “What happened?”
“We were on our way to London for the opening of Parliament.” They had been less than a day’s travel from the city when the axel broke, when their carriage veered off the road. Horrible screams of terrified horses, the smashing of wood as they plunged into the ditch, the screeching sounds of twisting metal— Then everything had gone so terrifyingly still. She shuddered at the memory and said simply, “The carriage overturned, and my husband was killed.”
“Were you and Emmeline hurt?”
She shook her head, her eyes still focused on the shadows. “Cuts…bruises…” She’d been far more wounded by her husband’s death than anything else. Not because she’d loved him—she hadn’t, just as he had never loved her—but because of the turmoil their lives had been thrown into. They’d suffered the loss of their home to his cousin, who’d inherited the title and all the lands entailed with it. What little money she’d received from her dower had dwindled rapidly from paying medical specialists who all promised that they could make her daughter well again, yet so far had only failed.
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded and blinked hard.
“What was your husband like?”
“He was a baron.” That summarized everything about Davenport.
“He must have loved his daughter a great deal.”
She didn’t look at him—couldn’tlook at him. But she could feel the scrutiny of his gaze on her, and she couldn’t lie. “No,” she whispered, “he didn’t.” Not at all. He’d been furious that Emmeline wasn’t a boy, that Nora had failed him as a wife by not bearing him a son. “Davenport had a temper, and Emmeline never seemed able to please him. We’d been traveling for three days when the accident happened. She was restless, couldn’t sit still, couldn’t be quiet—”
She choked off, blinking hard. Emmeline had been only four years old, for heaven’s sake! How was she supposed to sit still for so many hours of boring travel, cooped up inside a carriage?
“He’d been telling her to stop fidgeting, to be quiet…that her talking disturbed him. When she couldn’t stay quiet, he lost his temper and yelled, and she began to cry. The more he yelled, the harder she cried…God help me, but I kept—I kept trying to silence her so Davenport would stop yelling. But she wouldn’t settle down, wouldn’t stop crying and screaming no matter how much I begged, no matter howloudly Davenport yelled at her.” Nora choked off and pulled in a ragged breath to steady herself. “She was screaming when the carriage wrecked,” she whispered, barely louder than a breath. “She hasn’t spoken a word since.”
Mason said nothing and stared thoughtfully into the shadows, which moved beneath the flares that burst overhead like blossoming flowers. But he reached over to take her elbow again in a reassuring touch that inexplicably warmed up her arm and into her chest.
“That’s why we’re in London, staying with Lord and Lady Whitwell, so that Emmeline can be seen by specialists.” And because she didn’t have the money to rent their own rooms. Because every spare pound she had went to pay doctors’ bills.
“But their treatments aren’t working, are they? No matter what you’ve tried.”
Her gaze darted to him. He still stared into the darkness at the rear of the garden, but his grim expression had hardened like stone, the softness of his mouth contrasting the sharp line of his jaw.
“No, they’re not,” she answered honestly.
“Yet these specialists are eagerly taking your money.” Not a question. An accusation. “And giving you false hope.”
Her chest tightened. How dare he question what she was doing to help her daughter? “My hope isn’tfalse.” She pulled her arm away. “And if one of those doctors is able to help her speak again, I will gladly hand over everything I have in gratitude.”
He replied quietly, “And they know that, too.”
Her hands drew into fists at her sides.Enough.This conversation was over.
“Emmeline,” she called out. “Come along. We need to leave.”
“Lady Davenport, you don’t need to—”
“Emmeline—now!”
He didn’t try a second time to keep her there.Thank God.
An eternity passed as her racing pulse ticked off the passing silence that spread between them. Finally, the shadows moved, and Emmeline came forward at a snail’s pace—a snail who was racing a glacier and losing. Of course, she kept pausing to glance up at the flashes of color lighting up the sky.
Nora hurried forward, took Emmeline by the hand, and led her toward the bushes along the wall. “Goodbye, Mr. Granger.”
But the resolve she hoped to convey to never see him again was woefully undercut by the curious glance Emmeline cast him over her shoulder as they slipped through the little garden gate.
