Page 40 of If I Loved You
“She never said,” he answered, his voice cracking. “All those letters and I had only one reply...asking me to stop.” He stared straight ahead, seeing only the past perhaps. “God, but she was stubborn, was so sure I was not sincere, meant only a dalliance.” With a smirk toward Emma, he admitted, “I was, truth be known, a bit of a rogue back then.”
Emma smiled. George Fiske was very kind, perhaps mellowed with his advanced age. She tried to imagine what he might have been like, or looked like, in his youth.
“But where is she? I had a sense she left Benedict House rather in a hurry.”
George Fiske sighed, a great sadness oozing out of him. “I visited that house, and Caralyn just before Christmas, 1774. Lady Morrissey was very ill. Caralyn could, or would, barely make time for me. When her lady died three days before Christmas, she just disappeared—no notice, no word of where she might be going. She just...up and left...me.”
“Lord Hadlee, I am so very sorry.”
“You needn’t be. It was so very long ago.”
“But you miss her still.”
He made a face. “Only when I think of her.” He turned to Emma then, shifted actually to face her. “But you said you currently have the sponsorship of Lady Marston?Sheknew Caralyn Withers. They were rather brought up together, along with Lindsey’s mother, Barbara Morrissey. Lady Julianne was Barbara’s great aunt, if I recall correctly.”
“Then Lady M might know what became of your Caralyn,” Emma suggested with some hopefulness.
He shook his head. “I badgered her at the time. She hadn’t any more of a clue than I had. Curiously, Lady Marston—she was simply Lady Leticia back then—and I were expected to marry at one time. But I’d found Caralyn and she’d latched onto Marston, that we’d both begged off. Families weren’t too happy, but they allowed it—the Marstons were a very wealthy family.”
“But you have a son, so you must have married after all.”
A slow and thoughtful nod preceded his response. “Amelia Frere. Few years older than I. Seemed a safe choice, wouldn’t try to steal my heart from Caralyn, not that she could have. She wasn’t...awful. She just wasn’t Caralyn. Been gone now a decade, maybe more.”
Emma chewed upon her lip as well as a thought. “Lord Hadlee, would you like to have those letters returned to you?”
His face brightened, his brows lifted. “Do you think I might?”
Emma laughed, “They are yours, my lord. Of course, you should have them.”
He inclined his head and rubbed his hands on his thighs once again. “I would like that.”
Emma passed the remainder of the night with George Fiske in the music room, barely giving any thought to the earl or Lady Marston, who may or may not be searching for her, or at least wondering where she might be. People came and went from the music room, others looking for quiet, away from the crush and noise of the ball itself. More than once, a young couple burst intothe room, clearly hopeful of finding it empty, quickly departing when they realized it was not. After about a half hour, in which time Lord Hadlee and Emma traded more life tales and anecdotes of years gone by, a man stepped into the room, and did not leave upon spying the unlikely pair upon the settee but strode with purpose toward them.
“My son,” Hadlee announced. As lively as he had been in the last half hour, his tone now soured. “Too much like his mother,” he whispered to Emma, then increased the volume of his voice to say, “Ah, there you are, Peter.”
The man, whom Emma decided was not at all a younger version of George Fiske, stood before the settee and ogled Emma with a practiced leer. It was quite discomfiting.
“Bloody Hades, Peter,” Lord Hadlee groused, “leave off with...whatever that pitiable expression is meant to convey. I read only desperation and nonsense.”
“But won’t you introduce me, Father?”
Peter Fiske was short where his father was lanky, was round as his sire was thin, and possessed a complexion of some misfortune, being blotchy and pocked. But his eyes, Emma noted, repelled her the most; dark and wild, alternating nervously from narrowed to widened, he gawked at Emma as if she were naught but a delicacy upon the buffet, and he a starving man.
George Fiske stood from the seat. “I will not. She’s untarnished yet, to know persons such as you.” He extended his hand to Emma, bringing her to her feet as well. “I will see you returned safely to your Lord Lindsey.”
“I can take her,” offered Peter, while spittle followed this suggestion out of his mouth.
Both Lord Hadlee and Emma rather towered over Peter Fiske.
“She’s not a pet, in need of a stroll,” Lord Hadlee sniped at his son and pulled Emma away from him. “I swear to God, Miss Ainsley, I tried for years to like him. I just cannot.”
Emma pursed her lips at this sad circumstance, though she had recognized relatively quickly how different were Lord Hadlee and his son.
They stepped out into the hall and actually ran into Lady Marston and the earl, who was settling the woman’s cloak about her shoulders near the front door.
“There she is!” Lady M called out, sounding none too pleased. And then her breath noticeably caught as she saw who escorted Emma presently.
“I’ve been looking for you for twenty minutes,” the earl said with some reprimand, seeming unconcerned that they had an audience.
