Page 53 of A Duke to Undo her
“Madeline, dear, Mr. Emerton has requested a few moments to speak to Josephine alone and I am minded to grant this request if Josephine is in agreement. You and I can sit in the room next door.”
Josephine blinked, looked to Benedict Emerton and then nodded, utterly confused. Why should he wish to speak to her alone in such a formal manner? If they wished to make silly jokes or remarks, they could normally giggle together in a corner or walk ahead of their companions without any need for this sort of fuss.
“Nothing has happened at Ashbourne Castle has it?” she suddenly thought aloud, rushing to Benedict’s side. “Your mother is well, isn’t she, and your brother?”
“Yes, my mother and Cassius are both well,” he assured her quickly, his fair-skinned face more solemn than usual. “Do not worry yourself. Ashbourne Castle is exactly as you left it yesterday.”
“Oh good,” Josephine sighed, relaxing again. “Well, then. Do sit down there, Mr. Emerton and we shall have tea, without any bad news.”
Madeline and Vera had both now left the room and the door closed quietly behind them.
“Thank you for doing me the honor of receiving my addresses, Lady Josephine,” said Mr. Emerton as soon as they were alone.
Josephine laughed slightly and sat down on the sofa beside him, comfortable as always in his presence.
“Why are you talking in that silly formal way, Mr. Emerton? I don’t believe I have ever heard you talk like that to me.”
He smiled self-consciously and looked down, something evidently on his mind.
“I rather thought I should, since I came here with the express intention of asking you to marry me. Isn’t that how I’m meant to talk?”
“Marry you?!” exclaimed Josephine, this being the last thing in the world she had expected. “Do I understand you right, Mr. Emerton? You wish me to marry you?”
The entire idea was incredible. What had come over him? Josephine even wondered if her friend might have fallen from his horse and hit his head.
“Well, we are such good friends and I can’t imagine enjoying anyone’s company more than yours,” he replied with a shrug as he tried to justify his proposal. “Some people marry with far less personal sympathy than that, in my experience, especially when they marry for money or position. We should never grow to hate one another as they often do.”
“Benedict, you and I are not those people. We are the kind who would never marry for money or position, even if our families wished it. We will only marry for love. You and I can always be good friends and enjoy one another’s company anyway, can’t we? Why should we marry? I don’t understand you at all.”
Benedict Emerton gave a laugh and sat back on the sofa, shaking his head ruefully. He did not take her reaction in ill-part at all, but still seemed troubled by something. There was a shadow across his usually sunny features.
“It seems I have entirely made a mess of my first proposal of marriage, Lady Josephine, if even the lady in question cannot take it seriously.”
Josephine regarded him fondly and took one of his hands in hers, feeling it no different in that moment to taking the hand of Madeline or Rose.
“Benedict, you are one of the best men I have ever met and one day, some very lucky woman will be fortunate to call you her husband. But answer me truthfully, in your heart, do you really want me to be your wife? Picture it and answer me honestly.”
“No,” he admitted with a long sigh after following Josephine’s instructions. “You feel more like my friend, or my sister, not my wife.”
Josephine nodded, satisfied.
“That is exactly it,” she agreed, patting his hand and releasing it. “You feel like my brother, not a man to marry. What on earth put all this into your head?”
“Cassius,” he confessed with groan and a slightly guilty expression. “We argued last night, Josephine. He really is unbearable sometimes.”
Josephine looked down, afraid to ask for the cause of their argument or its outcome. Benedict Emerton continued, regardless, now wanting to get his full story off his chest.
“He has been urging me to marry since I turned one-and-twenty, and even told me that I shall have the family’s London house for my own household when I do marry. This week, he entirely changed his tune and told me I should marry you. Last night, he pushed me too far.”
At this explanation, Josephine winced, reminded painfully of Cassius making the same suggestion to her at the worst possible moment in the library and then again by the fountain.
“That isn’t why I did it,” Mr. Emerton added hastily, misinterpreting her reaction. “I am not so easily led as to doeverything Cassius tells me. It was more that I felt I couldn’t bear to be under the same roof with him a day longer. I thought that if we had our own home, and I escaped Cassius trying to control me, we might be happy together.”
“Oh Benedict,” Josephine replied, sad with her understanding of what had happened and the harmful dynamic she saw playing out between the two brothers, both of whom she cared for in their own way. “We should never have been happy together. Eventually, you might have resented Cassius even more for pushing us together, especially if you fell in love one day when you were already married to me.”
“I hadn’t really thought about that,” the fair-haired man replied. “But you are right. It would be awful to regret something as big and irrevocable as a marriage, and I probably would blame him, fairly or unfairly. I suppose we all fall in love eventually. Except Cassius.”
“Even Cassius,” Josephine said very quietly. “Do you know, I swore an oath about marriage with my friends once, Benedict. We made a pact to find our ideal husbands. My ideal was ridiculous then, a fantasy man from all the novels I’ve read.”
