“I never thought I would want to go home,” Ines said.
“All good adventures must end sometime.” Emmeline looked out at the rise and the craggy landscape beyond. It looked like it was raining on one of the peaks not so far away. “At least we will sleep in beds tonight.”
“I would rather sleep out here.”
Emmeline snorted. “No, you wouldn’t.”
Ines smiled at her. “You are right. But I do not like her.”
“I told you she was a force to be reckoned with.”
“She must hate me,” Ines said. “The low shopkeeper who dared to look at her son.”
“I don’t know what she thinks of you,” Emmeline said. “But one thing my mother always told me is that society respects those with a spine. You showed her you would not be cowed. I think Lady Charlotte, of all people, respects that.”
“Your mother is a wise woman.”
“She has her moments,” Emmeline admitted. “But she can also be ridiculous and petty and superficial. I hope you will not mind if, when Colonel Draven comes, I ask him to escort me to my grandmother’s.”
“You will not go home?” Ines asked.
“Not while the Season rages. I won’t be stuffed into another silk gown and forced to stand against a wall while men turn up their noses at me because I am too old or too outspoken or too fat.”
Ines gasped. “I cannot believe any man would think any of those things about you. I wish I had your figure or your way with words. I thought you had not married because you were in love with Mr. Fortescue.”
“I am not in love with Stratford.”
Ines just looked at her.
“I am not!” Emmeline closed her eyes. “I was not. And he is not the reason I haven’t married. I don’t want to marry a man who does not love me as I am. All of my life my mother has tried to change me. Keep your opinions to yourself, Emmeline. Suck in your stomach, Emmeline. Try to smile, Emmeline. Why can’t I just be myself? And after almost four and twenty years of my mother telling me how to behave, why should I give myself to a man who will spend the next four and twenty telling me how he would like me to behave?”
“I understand,” Ines said quietly. “There are many men who want to dominate and control. But Mr. Fortescue does not seem to be that type of man.”
“He’s not,” Emmeline admitted. “But I do not want to marry him. I don’t want to marry any man.” This was not quite true. There was a part of her who wanted very much to marry Stratford, but after he’d rejected her in the pool, she could hardly look at him, much less consider spending the rest of her life with him.
“Men are awful,” Ines said almost to herself.
“Yes, they are,” Emmeline agreed. “We will soon be rid of those two.” She tossed her head in the direction of the house just as the door opened and a servant emerged and waved to them.
An hour or so later, Emmeline was settled into a large room with a window that overlooked green fields and, in the distance, the shrouded peaks of the Highlands. It was like a painting, she thought. It was so beautiful she could not quite believe it was real. Staring out of this window, her life in London seemed very far away. The Season seemed like a distant memory, something that had happened to some other woman.
When she had left Odham Abbey, Emmeline had feared she would turn back. Not because the journey was difficult. Oh, she had not anticipated how difficult a journey this would be or how unprepared she was for a world beyond her sheltered sphere. She had feared she’d turn back because she would come to find that she missed her old life. It was one thing to believe one could do without servants and four-course dinners and days full of lawn bowls or battledore and shuttlecock, but it was another to actually experience it.
And Emmeline would acknowledge that she wouldn’t mind a clean dress or a maid to do her hair or a long nap, but she did not need them. And the only things she missed about her old life were her sisters. She missed Hester’s preening and Abigail’s snooping and Marjorie’s cold feet when she climbed into bed at night. She missed the way Robert’s face lit up when he saw them after a month or so away at school.
Truth be told, she even missed the way her mother kissed her goodnight and the smell of roses in her hair. She did not miss her mother’s fussing and scolding, but she wouldn’t have minded someone giving her a hug right about now.
Emmeline wiped her eyes and blinked at the watery scene outside. For once, it was not raining outside, but she couldn’t seem to make her eyes stop watering. She knew why. It wasn’t hard for a woman with a modicum of intelligence to ascertain the true reason for the tears. Thinking of her family had stirred up her emotions, and those emotions had opened the door to the emotions she had tried to lock away—her feelings for Stratford.
What did she feel for him? Attraction? Definitely. Lust? Absolutely. Friendship? Always. But love? Did she love him?
She feared she was falling in love with him. Or perhaps she had fallen in love with him. She couldn’t say when it had happened—sometime between that walk to Milcroft Village and that—whatever it was—in the spring-fed pool. She hadn’t thought she would ever fall in love with him. If she’d had to choose one of the Fortescue men to fall in love with, it probably would have been the middle brother who was always making amusing comments and coming up with entertaining diversions.
But when she really thought about it, it wasn’t Stratford’s brothers she remembered from her childhood. It was Stratford. She had a memory of him helping her up after she’d fallen and skinned her knee and promising not to tell anyone she’d cried about it. And he hadn’t. She remembered him playing spillikins with her when none of his other siblings had time to teach her the game. And she remembered more recently, too. He’d dutifully escorted her to balls, and when her mother had criticized her for saying something impertinent, Stratford had always defended her by saying that she was right. Of course, whether her opinion was accurate was never her mother’s point. But Stratford understood that Emmeline didn’t need to be right—although she usually was—she needed to be heard.
Stratford heard her. He saw her. He had always been there for her. How had she not fallen in love with him long ago? And how had she not seen that he had feelings for her for what must have been some time now. But if he had feelings for her, why did he reject her? Why did he keep pushing her away?
A tap sounded on the door, and she opened it to a middle-aged woman she’d seen moving about efficiently in the hall after the midday meal. “I’m Mrs. Freskin. Lady Charlotte asked me tae bring ye this.”
The housekeeper’s accent was thick, and it took Emmeline several seconds to comprehend what she’d said. When the woman held out the dress draped over her arm, it helped make matters clear. Emmeline opened her door wider, and the woman brought the dress in and laid it on the bed. She had a pile of clean underthings as well as a towel and soap. “Lady Charlotte has sent the tub and warm water.” There was another tap at the door and the footman who’d served at the meal brought in a small tub that Emmeline might fit in if she pulled her knees up to her chest.
“He’ll be back with the water.”
An hour later, Emmeline was clean and dry in a simple wool dress whose style was old-fashioned—the waist being too low—but was soft and warm. Her hair was still damp, the fire not being sufficient to dry the thick strands, but Mrs. Freskin had secured it in an elegant topknot, and when Emmeline passed a mirror in the entryway, she smiled at the results. The cut of the out-of-fashion dress actually suited her better than the newer style with the waists practically under her breasts. The full skirt but closer-fit bodice made her body look shapely, not like an amorphous potato sack, and the blue, though faded, had always been a good color on her. She’d taken a shawl in the clan colors and wrapped it about her shoulders and gone outside to find Loftus.