Fortunately, she had appeared to be choking rather than concealing an onset of laughter, thus supplying a very fortuitous excuse.
“Are you quite all right?” Veronica asked, turning her attention on Emily.
“Yes, quite,” Emily managed, adding a cough in order to prevent the urge to smile. “Please excuse me. I believe I must have gotten a speck of dust caught in my throat—it happens sometimes.”
Thankfully her eyes had also begun to water, adding to the plausibility of her lie, but as she looked about, she caught Francis giving her a stern stare. It was as if he’d caught her in a terrible act and was silently admonishing her for it. Embarrassed, she quickly averted her eyes to look at a potted plant in the corner of the room.
How was it possible for him to make her feel so rotten about herself? She had never cared about his opinion in the past. Yet at that very moment, the look that he had given her had made her feel so very small.
Of course it wasn’t that she thought there was anything the least bit humorous about her parents’ deaths. She loved her parents and had spent two years in full mourning as opposed to the standard one. Not a day passed without her thinking of them, yet there had been something very comical about the way in which Baroness Giddington (or Mrs. Peacock, as Emily presently thought of her) had looked as she raised her eyes toward heaven and let out a small sigh. One might even be tempted to think that she had rehearsed the scene at home in front of a mirror and was now merely acting it out. Emily’s mouth twitched again at the idea.
How strange to have that sudden urge to laugh again, Emily thought. She hadn’t laughed in a whole week, which was so very unlike her. It felt good, though—like a burden had been lifted from her shoulders and she was finally able to relax. Oh, but she mustn’t laugh now, not again. Out came yet another croak.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Veronica exclaimed. “Would somebody please get this poor woman some water?”
Francis quickly poured a glass from the decanter sitting on the table. Some of it missed, splashing onto the polished wooden surface. He quickly brushed it away with the palm of his hand to prevent it from leaving a permanent mark—something that his mother had always made a point of.
Thrusting it forward, the water sloshed from side to side, almost spilling onto the top of Emily’s dress as she reached for the glass and steadied it. “Thank you,” she muttered, looking everywhere but at Francis, who she knew would be regarding her disapprovingly.
“This is Emily,” Francis said as he addressed Veronica with a tight smile that wasn’t really a smile at all. “She’s the middle sister, Beatrice being the eldest and Claire the youngest.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Beatrice told Lady Giddington kindly.
Thank God for Beatrice, Emily thought as she worked on mastering some form of self-control. It was proving difficult, but not impossible, even though Francis seemed to be in an increasingly bad mood. Emily didn’t doubt for a minute that it was because of her. She closed her eyes briefly in order to rid herself of “the giggles,” as she termed it—likening her fits of laughter to a disease of sorts. She then took a deep breath, opened her eyes again, and managed a brilliant smile that didn’t appear to be nearly as fake as it felt.
“Well, I daresay,” Veronica remarked as she loosened the ribbons of her bonnet and removed it. “You are all as lovely as Francis told me you would be. This shan’t be difficult at all!”
“Liar!” Emily wanted to yell. If there was one thing that she was sure of, it was that Francis had never used the word “lovely” to describe her or her sisters in his life. She was willing to bet her life on it if she had to. But she kept her smile steady, appearing at least outwardly to be having a jolly good time indeed. The truth, however, was that she had no desire to be there at all. She would so much rather be shoveling manure in Mr. Hughes’s pig sty back in Hardington, but refused to think of it lest she suffer yet another onset of “the giggles.”
As it turned out, Baroness Giddington wasn’t nearly as pretentious as Emily had first thought. In fact, the rest of the afternoon passed surprisingly well with a large degree of amicable conversation. And yet, as Emily had recently come to discover, things were more often than not too good to be true.
“Did you happen to hear that Mr. Adrian Fairchild is in town?” Veronica asked as she raised a smug eyebrow. She was certain that she would be the first to deliver the news, for she had just happened to pass Lady Carroway in the street that very morning. “He is a friend of yours, is he not?”
Emily almost spat out the tea that she’d been drinking, biting down on her tongue instead as she clamped her mouth shut. Her eyes darted nervously toward Beatrice, who was inscrutable as she carefully picked up a plate of biscuits and offered it to the baroness. “Indeed he is,” she replied coolly. “In fact, we saw him just a little over a week ago. We really had no idea that he would be coming to London, but perhaps Francis knew . . . they are after all related to one another.”
“Ah yes.” Veronica appeared as if she was attempting to figure out the exact relationship between her friend and Adrian.
“I did not,” Francis told them bluntly, a dark shadow flickering behind his eyes. “What brings him to London?”
A bright smile spread across Veronica’s face. It was quite clear that she was pleased with the opportunity to tell them all just exactly why Adrian had come to town. Emily shifted slightly in her seat, her nervous demeanor destroying all attempts she was making at looking indifferent. “Well,” Veronica told them, then paused for dramatic effect as she looked at each of them in turn. “He has come to town to make a formal announcement of his engagement to Lady Kate Clemens. It will happen at the Carroway ball, which, because of this new development, is sure to be all the talk of the town—in fact, it is sure to be an event that we must not miss at any cost.”
At that Emily did choke on her tea, setting off yet another bout of coughing.
“Perhaps you ought to see a doctor about that cough of yours, my dear?” Veronica suggested with an appropriate amount of concern. “We don’t want you spraying fluids on people when we’re out in public.”
“I’ll be just fine,” Emily managed to retort with a sharper tone to her voice than she had intended. She couldn’t, however, guarantee that she wouldn’t die of embarrassment. People were bound to talk—after all, gossip was the top priority amongst the ton. She could hear them whispering even now, wondering why the woman who had been the closest friend of both the bride and groom was in such a foul mood on such an otherwise happy occasion. They might even go so far as to say that she had ruined the evening for everyone. And those who knew why she wasn’t smiling would be wondering why she had bothered to come at all.
She had been reluctant to participate in Francis’s attempt at making her and her sisters presentable enough to appear at public events. But once she’d been convinced, she’d begun to let the idea of it excite her—if for no other reason than that it stopped her from thinking about love lost. Who would have thought that one of those events—strike that, the most important of those events—would be Adrian Fairchild’s engagement party?
Emily was suddenly in a thoroughly sour mood. She had come to London to escape from Adrian and Kate, yet now she was about to find herself being dragged off to a ball that was intended to celebrate their love for one another, the happiness of their spending the rest of their lives together—a life that she had so abruptly been excluded from.
Emily dropped her head in her hands with a groan. This was turning out to be a very long season indeed. Quite frankly, the sooner it was over, the better, Emily decided.
CHAPTER NINE
“Might I have a word with you?” Francis asked as he addressed Emily with an even expression that told her nothing of what he might be thinking. Still, she had a faint idea.
They had just seen the back of Baroness Giddington’s bright blue dress and feathers exiting the door, though not before settling upon a mutually agreeable time for the sisters to join her at the dressmaker’s. The dreaded time was set for Friday morning at ten. Beatrice, Claire, and Emily would meet her there and afterward they would go to lunch. In the afternoon they would have a look at all the invitations together in order to decide upon which to accept.
Before any of this was to take place, however, there was still the small matter of Francis to deal with. And though Emily couldn’t be completely certain, she was still fairly sure that he was extremely annoyed with her. She groaned inwardly as she followed him through to his study, not because she cared if he was annoyed with her or not, but because their conversation promised to be an annoying deterrent from the quiet walk she’d been looking forward to. Partaking in small talk over tea and biscuits with Baroness Giddington had fairly depleted Emily of that day’s pent-up resources for social dialogue. Now she wanted nothing more than to be alone with her thoughts, if for no other reason than to digest the absurdity of attending the Carroway ball.
“Please close the door behind you.” Francis broke the hushed silence. His voice was calm, but lacked emotion—perfectly suited to his character, Emily thought, as she gently pushed the door closed, leaving it slightly ajar for the sake of propriety. Turning around, she saw Francis disappear through a wide doorway, the doors to which had been swung completely open. She followed him, realizing with sudden apprehension that they must have wandered from one house over to the other. Steeling herself, she glanced around the room she was now in, noticing with some interest that Francis had a rather impressive collection of books.
“Have a seat,” he told her as he gestured toward one of two brown leather club chairs in the corner. It squeaked ever so slightly as she did as he had asked. “Would you like something to drink?”
“Would you like to get to the point?” she asked dryly, surprising even herself with her rudeness.
Francis merely raised an eyebrow, put down the carafe that he had just picked up with the intention of pouring himself a cognac, and walked over to the other chair. “Very well,” he said as he sat down next to her, facing her at an angle. “Would you mind explaining to me what the hell it was that you found to be so amusing that you could barely contain yourself in front of Veronica?”
“Veronica?”
Francis gave an impatient wave of his hand. “Baroness Giddington.” He had forgotten that she had been only formally introduced. “Honestly, Emily, if I didn’t know better I would have thought that you were laughing at her.”
“I was,” Emily told him flatly. If she had ever had the intention of shocking Francis Riley, she had, with this declaration, succeeded quite well.
Though he didn’t reveal just how surprised he truly was—not only because she had openly laughed at one of the highest-ranking socialites in London, but because she’d openly admitted to it—his mouth did open slightly and his eyes did take on a look of wonder. It was as if he was seeing her for the very first time. She had always struck him as being the very definition of kindness, yet she had just now displayed a streak of cruelty that he couldn’t understand, let alone like.