Page 64 of If I Loved You
Callum smiled, first at the earl, and then at Emma. When Mr. Smythe brought Zachary back to their conversation about the orchard, Callum said to Emma, “There, now you know. I’ve got a bloody fishing date with an earl, but at least you’ve got your answer.”
Emma swallowed, digesting this, everything. She didn’t think he’d come specifically to sit down to dinner with persons so far below him in class to prove a point to her. He couldn’t have known he’d have found them here. She’d been an absolute harridan on the last two occasions that they’d met, and yet here he was. He had, by now, said that he loved her and that he desired to marry her. She’d be a fool to at least not investigate the possibility that he might be telling the truth.
He won’t marry you. He cannot marryyou.
But as she learned so depressingly today, Lady M liked to tell lies when she deemed a certain part of a pair unacceptable.
With her hands flat on the table, one on each side of her plate, she closed her eyes. She felt as if her mind could not yetsort and analyze and assess everything that she did know to be true.
Emma lifted her gaze, found the earl watching her, even as conversation continued around them. His gray eyes, made golden by the candles burning overhead, warmed her with the serenity of his gaze.
Mayhap, the only thing that was important was that she loved him.
“I don’t want to be Caralyn Withers.”
The table fell silent.
Emma’s attention was fixed with such constancy on Zach, that she didn’t think she misread the ever-so-slight quirk of his lips.
“What’s that, dear?” Inquired Mrs. Smythe.
Fiona, bless her and curse her, offered, “She said she doesn’t want to be someone named Caralyn Withers.”
“Is that the miss who sells the oysters on High Street?” Asked Mr. Smythe, with a furrowed brow, trying to place the name.
“No, that’s Mary Mac-something or other,” recalled Mrs. Smythe. “Remember the grocer told us about the accident she’d had, something to do with a saw and rowboat? Made no sense to me, but there she is, limping along the lane to the lake.”
Zachary grinned at Emma. She wasn’t there yet, could not respond in kind.
“Do you want to take this somewhere private?”
Emma shook her head, panicked. She could not be alone with him, not for so weighty and decisive a conversation. She didn’t trust herself. My God, if he kissed her, even touched herat all, she might find herself upon her knees, begging him to just keep pretending that he loved her, that she could live with that.
“I apologize for my most recent unseemly behavior,” she said to him, from one end of the table to the far corner of the other. “On the last two occasions that we’d met.”
The quality of her expression and tone, both being rather severe, might have been what quieted everyone else.
“After some consideration,” the earl returned, his voice level and sure, while all eyes turned toward him, “your reaction this afternoon seems to have been warranted, the cause of it so damnably intolerable. Regarding the first incident of which you speak, I will allow that the circumstances were unprecedented, neither of us having been in that exact position ever, not once, in all our lives.”
Five sets of eyes swiveled toward Emma. Bethany was picking the remaining potatoes out of the stew with her fingers and putting the pieces on Zachary’s plate.
It took Emma a moment to understand, to deduce that he meant because it had been her introduction to sex, and his first declaration of love.
“I don’t want to be Caralyn Withers,” she repeated, and explained, “acting and reacting on the probably false words of another.”
Here, his mouth did tighten marginally. “Might I inquire what probable falsehoods you were given?”
She summarized, “I was told that you only toyed with me, that your career would prohibit you from wedding me. Yet, I was informed that you wouldsaythat you would like to marry me, as that was part of the game you played.”
The dinner guests turned their rapt gazes to the earl, awaiting his rebuttal.
“That sounds frightfully familiar to words I compelled from another earlier today, after you and I had parted, so I needn’t ask from whom they came. Do you believe them still?”
“I don’t...wantto believe them.”
In her periphery, Emma thought she saw Mr. Smythe lift a finger, as if he’d like to contribute to the discussion. Mayhap he had a question. Mrs. Smythe, saying not a word, covered his hand with hers and lowered both to the table.
“I didn’t bring you to London only to be of assistance with the Hindrance, but because I wanted you there with me,” the earl said, “because I didn’t like the idea of being away from you. I wanted you to stay, even as I realized you were pining for Bethany. And I understood, even before I brought you to London, that I wanted to marry you. Lady M tried to dissuade me, it’s true. And when I found you talking to Beckwith, yes, I reacted poorly. And when I kissed you at Clarendon’s ball, I’ll admit that was brutish and unpardonable.”
