Page 37 of All I Want for Christmas… Is You
Not at the moment, however.
He found he couldn’t stomach the notion of leaving after what he’d apparently done to Emma. That he’d turned the once sweet girl into an embittered shrew plagued him to no end.
He’d had only the best of intentions by begging off their engagement—had done so purely out of respect for her father. He hadn’t wished to dishonor the man by dishonoring his daughter, and though her father had seemed so certain a marriage between them was precisely what both Lucien and Emma needed, Lucien was equally certain that marrying her would lead to just the sort of degradation of their relationship he wished to avoid.
As it seemed, he had managed to do everyone a dishonor anyway.
For a long moment he sat, staring out of the open door of his carriage in disgust of himself as a vision of the sweet girl he’d first met loomed before his eyes.
How old was she now? Twenty-one? Twenty-two? Past age to be married, but still too young and too naive for the likes of him, even if she had been one hundred and one. He needed heirs, but not so much that he could bear to destroy some gentle creature’s life for the sake of his name.
While the notion of marrying had never wholly appealed to him, he had been perfectly amenable to doing his duty. As the last remaining Willyngham, he was now responsible for ensuring the continuation of his family line, but he hadn’t been prepared for Emma.
He was much too jaded, cynical, and selfish—a combination as lethal to the soul as acid over a thriving bloom. He was like his father, he feared, and the truth was that he hadn’t loved the Emma of three years past—hadn’t really even known her—and while she’d certainly appealed to him in a very basic way, he hadn’t foreseen that he would ever develop such a devotion to her.
She was too sweet and naïve.
His mother’s death had been deemed accidental, but even if she hadn’t been aware of the deadly dosage she had taken, she had been slowly poisoning herself for years. Lucien well knew why, and once he’d realized that fact, he’d understood the folly of marrying someone like Emma—someone who wanted more from a marriage than jewels and a name.
Damn.
He had hoped to find someone he could like, and hedidlike Emma. But more than that, he had hoped to find someone who would be content to live her own life and who would simply leave him be. He didn’t want her to be wounded if he took a mistress, didn’t want her to care.
Emma was far too vulnerable... and if she could love him so easily—if she did love him—and she had once said she did—he could not, in all good conscience, condemn her to a life with the likes of him.
Someday she would thank him.
So why the devil did he feel this sudden, unexpected hollow in his soul?
Muttering an oath, he punched the rear facing seat with a clenched fist. And scowling, he lifted up his coat. Devil a bit! He’d managed to botch even this, and he’d never liked himself less than he did at the moment. The least he could do was to stay and right this wrong somehow. He owed Emma that much—an explanation at least.
Alighting from his carriage and shrugging on his coat, he sought out Peters, hoping to explain his intentions to her brother. He found Peters within the stables, handing the reins of his bay to a young stable hand.
“She’s a bit of blood,” Peters remarked when he spied Lucien.
“Emma?”
Peters chuckled softly, his dark eyes assessing. “Her, too,” he allowed.
“Odd that I do not recall her that way,” Lucien confessed.
“Perhaps because you never knew her,” Peters said, and tossed him a narrow-eyed glance as he started out of the stables.
Lucien followed, frowning at his own sense of confusion.
“I presume you will be departing Newgale?”
“Yes, well… as to that…” Lucien sucked in a breath. This morning, he’d escaped a fist up the nose, but he might just get one now. Scarcely believing what he was about to say, he cleared his throat and proposed, “In fact... I thought I’d remain yet another day?”
Emma’s brother halted abruptly and spun to face him, looking as perplexed as Lucien felt.
At the instant, he looked exactly like his father sans the uniform, and despite that Lucien stood at least a good half-foot taller than Peters, he’d never felt more anxious awaiting another man’s decision.
Peters was entirely within his rights to ask him to leave. Whatever the difference in their station, this was his home, and feeling as awkward as a tot under his scrutiny, Lucien ran nervous fingers through his black hair.
“You say you’d like to stay another day?” Andrew repeated dubiously. Even his brow lifted as would his father’s, and Lucien found himself easily relating his concerns for Emma.
Andrew Peters’s brows drew together as he scrutinized his sister’s soon-to-be-former betrothed.
