Page 35 of Choosing Her Earl at Last
Michael stepped beside Emmeline and looked down into her eyes. “Are you well enough to continue on? If not, I can carry on the investigation without you. I do not wish to cause a rift between you and your family.” Leaning down, he offered her a handkerchief.
Emmeline shook her head. “I will continue on with or without her support.” She sighed and looked up into Michael’s eyes. “She may seem cold, but she speaks only out of fear for her daughters.” The feel of her breath on his skin as she spoke caused a shiver of longing to pass along his spine.
Michael stood back up, putting some space between them. “I shall inform you of my findings once I have spoken with the magistrate.”
“Thank you,” Emmeline whispered softly, as she wiped the tears from her eyes. She moved to hand him back the handkerchief, but Michael shook his head.
“Keep it. You have more need of it than I.”
Louisa stepped forward, threading her arm through Emmeline’s. “We should return to the ball before anyone else notices that we are here. We do not need to draw more attention to this situation than already exists. Your mother’s words may have been coldin their delivery, but she is not wrong. The longer we stand out here, the more at risk our reputations are.”
Nodding in agreement, Michael and Colin watched as the ladies followed after Theodosia back toward the glittering ballroom and the gossipington.
“You still love her,” Colin observed.
It was not a question, and Michael did not answer.
Chapter 15
That night after the ball, Emmeline sat in her bedroom alone, studying her father’s encrypted message. She had been unable to sleep after their liaison in the gardens with the coachman. It had been the first real lead that they had had since Rebecca’s disappearance.
With Emmeline’s hunch that Martha Gouldman had something to do with Rebecca’s disappearance, having paid some small dividends, she had revisited the hidden message from her father.
Any clue might be the one that helped them to find her, no matter how small or unlikely. She knew that the pendant’s message probably had nothing to do with who took Rebecca, but Emmeline could not risk that chance. The only way to know for certain was to decode it.
“This message most likely has nothing to do with Rebecca at all,” Emmeline sighed in frustration as she set the paper back down, shoving away from her desk, to ready herself for bed. She had been staring at it for hours, none the wiser.
“It could be anything. It could be a farewell, although unlikely, as it was only given to me. It could be an apology for forcing me to marry Norman, also unlikely given that he did not apologize when he believed himself to be in the right.” Emmeline knew that she sounded crazy talking to herself as she was, but she didnot care. “How Mother and Father’s marriage survived with two such strong-minded people, I will never know.”
It still surprised her that her parents had truly loved one another, given their stark differences. Her father had been warm and adventurous. Her mother had been everything that a prim and proper lady should be, and then some. It was a match made of opposites.
The only time that she had ever seen her mother act in any way unladylike was when her parents would argue, then disappear for hours afterwards. It was not until Emmeline was married that she understood what they were doing during that absence. Emmeline shook her head.Love makes fools of us all.
She thought back to how often she and Michael had argued over the years.Clearly, I have inherited my parents’ stubborn determination.She made a self-effacing grimace of amusement and chagrin. At the thought of Michael, Emmeline’s heart began to beat faster in her chest.
He had nearly taken her into his arms in the garden. She had felt him as if his very thoughts were in her head. When he had leaned down to offer her his handkerchief, the smell of him had flooded her senses. He had smelled warm like brandy, honey, and sunlight. It had been quite intoxicating in the cool dark shadows of the garden.
Remembering the handkerchief that he had loaned to her, she pulled it from her reticule. It was a practical square of fabric, very like the man it belonged to … no frills, just purpose. However, just like the man, there was an artistic flair in one corner of the fabric where his initials had been monogrammed with the M and E overlapping.
Emmeline traced her fingertips over the raised letters. The same warm smell of brandy, honey, and sunlight wafted up from the cloth. Memories from their younger years flashed through her mind: his beautiful, laughing hazel eyes, his broad smile, and gentle touch. A stab of nostalgic pain pierced her heart as a single tear slipped down her cheek.
His eyes no longer laugh when they look at me. All that they hold now is sorrow, pain, and bitter blame.
Shaking her head, she shoved the handkerchief back into her reticule. She did not have the time or emotional energy to deal with such thoughts now. She needed to devote every bit of her energy to finding Rebecca. Turning her attention back to her father’s coded message, she frowned in concentration.
“I feel as though something is missing,” she mused quietly to herself. Sighing, she rubbed the back of her neck and went over other riddles that her father had created in her mind.There was usually another element to each of Father’s clues, such as water and salt, or a rose and a window …
Raising her eyebrow in inquiry, she once again examined the pendant that the message had been hidden in, but there was nothing that seemed to indicate a clue of any kind.
“Perhaps there is another message elsewhere left to Rebecca or Mother?” Emmeline inventoried everything that her father had left for each of them in her mind. Most things had gone to his nearest male relative as heir to his estate, but each of the women in his life had been given something to remember him by.
Emmeline had been given the pendant, a bit of money for further art purchases, and a painting that he had purchased years before during one of their many trips to the London auction house. Unlike his other paintings, her father had not displayed this one on the wall but had kept it locked away. Emmeline had always been curious as to why. When he had died, her mother had hung it on the wall in the library.
Standing, she crossed the room to the door. Opening it softly, Emmeline slipped out into the hallway and padded barefooted down the stairs to her father’s library. She moved to stand in front of the painting and studied it with a critical eye.
There was nothing particularly noticeable about any aspect of the image. The paint strokes and color choices were typical of the period in which it had been created. Sighing, she lifted the painting from the wall and inspected the frame with her fingertips. Finding nothing, she turned it over in her hands.
Her eyes traveled across the length and breadth of the back covering of the frame, her fingers running along the edges. As she came to the left corner of the covering, she felt the material give way, and she lifted the corner flap to find a patch of fabric on the back of the canvas.
