Page 14 of If I Loved You
Emma spent the remainder of the day by herself, and then with Bethany when the child awoke. She’d already decided that she would absolutely not join the earl for dinner and would bar the door if need be, but she needn’t have bothered with these ponderings, for she was informed by Thurman later in the day that the earl had sent his apologies—he would be dining with friends this evening. Emma might have squealed her joy at this lucky turn, but instead enjoyed a more relaxed evening, having not to fear the earl’s changeable moods and dark, brooding stare.
When Bethany had been sleeping for nearly an hour, Emma lifted her from her own bed and pushed open the door to the nursery, gently laying the babe into the tall crib. She left the door ajar, and then left her own room intent on finding Bethany’s doll, which must have been abandoned or forgotten somewhere downstairs.
Tying the sash of her dressing gown more securely about her, she searched the darkened parlor and then the sitting room, but to no avail. The house was quiet at this hour, and honestly, she felt a little like a thief sneaking around, trying so hard since she’d come to this overwhelming house to go unnoticed. This was not a simple thing to do, Bethany making herself known even as Emma would rather not.
Actually, she hadn’t been able to recall when last she’d seen the doll, and began to wonder if some tidy servant had onlyremoved it from the floor of some room. She peeked into yet another room on the first floor, surprised to find what must be the earl’s study. The room was large and gorgeous, with dark paneling and an entire wall of long windows, allowing moonlight to show her that indeed Bethany’s doll was atop the desk at the far side of the room. She snuck in, not quite sure why she bothered to tip-toe and even less sure how the doll might have found its way here. She breathed a startled gasp as she saw that behind the desk on the wall of gleaming paneling hung a beautiful portrait of Michael.
“Oh,” she moaned, and tears formed instantly. She covered her mouth with one hand just as the other grabbed hold of the doll from the desk. Oh, but wasn’t he so handsome, and stately, and fine? The painting must have been done years before, as his hair showed not the liberal gray that he’d gained by the time she had known him; his eyes were as wonderfully kind as she remembered; he was depicted from the thighs up, dressed in a clever high-collared waistcoat and tailcoat and a finely tied cravat of sumptuous creamy silk. Emma smiled at the almost Byronian hairstyle, his darker locks swept forward and to the right across his forehead. “Oh, how I miss you.” Her shoulders slumped. Aside from memories, too few at that, this was all she might ever have of him. She determined that she would bring Bethany here tomorrow, she would insist the child not forget this dear man.
She almost turned away, her sorrow heavy just now, but then decided to sit and visit with him for a while. With a pleased smile, thinking he might enjoy her company, she scooted behind the desk and turned the heavy side-armed chair all the way around until it faced the portrait. She sat in the chair, pulled her knees up to her chest, her feet just at the edge of the seat, andhugged the doll he’d bought for Bethany, being now within only feet of the painting.
“I wish you were here right now, my friend.”
The portrait was perfect, in that it showed the hint of a smile that seemed always to hover about his lips. His eyes nearly danced, so that Emma imagined whoever had put his image to canvas must have known him fairly well. Emma smiled back at him.
ZACHARY BENEDICT STOODfrozen at the opposite side of the room, having risen from the very desk chair in which she now sat, simply to refill his brandy snifter. The door opening had lifted his gaze, and Miss Ainsley’s creeping had kept him still, though a frown had come. Suspicion had faded as soon as she’d reached for the doll, which he had noticed upon his desk earlier.
Tucked in the shadows of the far corner, she had yet to notice his presence, and Zach hadn’t moved a muscle to alert her that she was not alone in the room. Her gasp, when she’d spied his father’s portrait had nearly startled him. And then she’d done the most remarkable thing, pivoting the chair and sitting down, staring at his father, seeming only to want to spend time with him.
Whispers of her soft words reached him. Honestly, he was a bit surprised at her referring to him as her friend. He might have supposed, as she thought herself alone with him, she might have been unguarded enough to perhaps refer to him asmy loveor some such nonsense.My friendgave him pause. And then all the words that followed, as she talked quietly to his father, laid outso many truths to him, most that he’d refused to see or believe until now.
“I’m going to bring Bethany here tomorrow,” she was saying, “I don’t want her to forget you.” Zach thought she might be crying, her voice cracked as she continued, “I wish I had known the last time I saw you was going to be...the last time I saw you. I would have used the time to tell you how wonderful you were. I would have told you I cherished every minute we’d spent together. I’m sorry I was often so resistant to all the help you tried to give to me. Honestly, I didn’t understand it. Maybe it frightened me a little—people are so rarely kind for no other reason than to be kind. But you were. So ridiculously kind.”
Still immobile near the small liquor cabinet, the fine crystal glass held at waist height in one hand, the brandy decanter in the other, Zach waited, afforded only a view of the top of her head over the back of the chair. She was quiet for a long time, her head tilted against the leather of that chair, glancing upward. “I remember the first night you came to the inn, when my finger was broken. You were so natural, so gentle with Bethany. She’d known Mr. Smythe all her little life and had never taken to him as she had to you. Just like that. It was so remarkable to see. We don’t need to talk again about the spoiling—you know well my thoughts on this, as I do yours.” Zach thought he detected a hint of a smile in her voice.
Another long pause, and her tone changed, was less soft. “Your son, Michael—we should talk about your son. Honest to God, Michael,” she was saying, “you did no favors to me by your descriptions of him. All that fatherly pride prepared me not at all for exactly...how different from you he is. He’s so...angry, it seems. Or just obstinate, I don’t rightly know. Were you likethat at his age, and just mellowed throughout the years? I cannot imagine that your beloved Barbara instilled such hardness in him. Oh my God, Michael! Did you spoil him as well? Is that why he’s so adamant about everything being done his way? Always being right? Looking down his nose at a person...”
Zach’s eyes widened. So much revealed just here, so many opinions then to put to those sparse and wary looks she so often gave him.
She carried on, “It’s not your fault though. He’s a grown man, all his decisions—to be mean or not to be—are his own. But I tell you now, Michael, if I find out you somehow inferred, or outright said to your son that Bethany is your daughter, I promise you, we are going to have words when next we meet. I cannot, for the life of me, imagine where he came upon that notion—so, apologies to you, my friend, I’m blaming you until I hear or know otherwise. Yes, I’ve told him the truth. He doesn’t believe me. I can see it in his eyes. Oh, and the best part, which I’m sure you are already aware of: he doesn’t mind looking down his nose at me—a taproom jade, he thinks—but what does he do at first opportunity? He kisses me. Did you see that?” She harrumphed then, and God help him, Zach almost burst out laughing.
“You probably did. It may have appeared for a moment that I enjoyed his kiss, but Michael, I assure you I did not. Well, honestly, I—no! No. I did not enjoy it one bit. Dear Lord, he frightens the bejesus out of me. You told me he was intelligent beyond imagining, and that his honor was strung about him as armor, and something about...oh, what was it? Oh, yes, you said he ‘was impressed neither by appearance nor rumors, but rather by the knowledge and character of a person, and if they had ahumble heart’. I have to tell you, Michael, your son wouldn’t know a humble heart if it thumped him upside the head. He’s too busy being bossy and intractable, and making people feel awkward in his presence. Again, not your fault.”
Intractable? Zach wondered. Was he? He didn’t know, but damn if he weren’t learning so very much right now. It was as good as being inside her head, he thought. But he chewed the inside of his cheek, believing it damnably unfortunate that she held such a low opinion of him.
He heard her yawn then, a vocal and lengthy yawn, and she was quiet for several more seconds until she said, a haunting melancholy tinting her words, “I hope you’ve been reunited with your Barbara. And maybe you’ve met Gretchen and have told her how adorable her daughter is. You always said I was a perfect mother to her,” she said, and tears must have come for her voice broke once more, “but does Gretchen think so? Will you tell her I’m trying my best?” Long pause now while she sobbed into her hands. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he thought she said, but could not be sure, muffled and cracked as the words were now.
Jesus, but it was enough to break his heart, even as he was quite sure she thought he hadn’t one.
“I miss you,” she whispered one more time and then was quiet and unmoving for so long, Zach was sure she must have fallen asleep in the chair.
He shifted his weight from one leg to another, so afraid to move if she were indeed still awake. But when another fifteen minutes or so had passed and she made no movement and uttered no more words, he gingerly and with excruciating slowness set the decanter and snifter onto the top of the cabinet. Only thesmallest of noises accompanied this, but in this very still room, it might have been heard, if she were awake.
She was still yet.
Zach walked silently to where she sat. Just as he came around the side of the chair, he saw that her elbow was on one bent knee, her small hand fisted and holding up her chin while she slumbered. Her other arm was wrapped around the doll, clutched tightly to her. The moonlight, which had not reached the corner in which he’d hidden, offered just enough illumination that he could distinguish the trail of tears down her cheeks and the small furrow in her brow.
What am I going to do with you?
He moved all the way around the chair, so that he faced her. He leaned his back against the wall, just near the frame of the portrait, and watched her sleep.
Possibly, she wasn’t real. She couldn’t be. They weren’t made like this, so very exquisite, and with that beautiful heart of hers, that missed his father, and her sister, and worried that she might be failing as the child’s mother. And talked to portraits in the night. Glancing sideways, he looked at the picture of his father, who at this very moment, from this angle, looked as if he were smiling upon her, as if only satisfied to be watching her sleep.
Ah, but she was stubborn, even while callinghimintractable. But she’d given the why of this: she was afraid. Frightened by kindness?
It was late. He was weary. And he considered that he had much to contemplate about everything she’d revealed to him, by way of her conversation with his sire.
Loath as he was to disturb her, he knew it needed to be done. As gently as possible, he shimmied his hands under herlegs and around her back and lifted her into his arms. The doll settled perfectly against her chest, and he strode from his study and through the dark hall to the wide staircase. He knew when she roused and realized her circumstance by the stiffening of her form in his arms. He climbed the stairs, and murmured, “Shh.” Though she said nothing, she remained fairly rigid in his grasp now.
