Page 15 of Choosing Her Earl at Last
Michael shrugged. “It would not be the first time. I am a regular topic of discussion among theton. Have you not heard that I am now known as the eccentric bachelor recluse?” His tone held an unspoken accusation, as if she were responsible for the gossip surrounding him.
Emmeline felt as if his words were a slap to the face. Anger swelled up within her. “I did not need you to defend me,” she repeated firmly.
“Why are you always so stubborn?” Michael asked, his ire rising. When Selina Bragg had spoken offensively toward Emmeline, he had defended her on instinct born of many years of affection. It irritated him that in spite of his anger toward her for her betrayal, he still felt the need to protect her. “Why can you not accept my help with good grace?”
Before he could say more, Emmeline stopped walking and turned to face him. “Thank you,” she breathed softly. Her chin rose, and she met his eyes. “Thank you for defending me.” She held his gaze for a brief moment, her whisky amber eyes liquid pools of warm vulnerability, then turned and continued walking.
Frowning in bewilderment at her sudden change in attitude, Michael silently fell back into step beside her. The way she had looked at him, anger warring with sorrow, had stirred something within him. They had always argued with one another for as far back as he could remember.
As children, Michael would play the gallant knight rescuing his damsel, but when he arrived at her castle to save her, he would find that she had already saved herself. She would never play such romantic games as other girls would, always running about as if she were one of the lads slaying dragons.
“Girls cannot be knights,”his younger self had argued.
“I can do anything that you can do,”she would argue back, fierce pride and a fire for life glimmering in her eyes.
What Michael had just seen in her eyes as she had looked up at him was but a ghost of the fire that had once been her most identifying feature.
What happened in her life that could quench such a fire? What pain could she have endured to have known the sorrow capable of such a feat?
He studied her profile discreetly from the side. She had lost her father and her husband, but he did not think that even that would have been enough to break a spirit such as hers.
He remembered a day when they had gone riding together and she had been bucked from the back of her horse. She had been scraped and bruised from head to toe, blood pouring down her arm. Michael had dismounted and wrapped the wound with a cloth.“Is it broken?”she had asked, a brief moment of fear in her voice.
Michael had reassured her that it was not. It was the only time in their lives that she had ever let him help her. The moment that he had finished wrapping her wound, she had gotten up and climbed back onto her horse, slapping his hand away as he had tried to help her mount.
Once back in the saddle, she had flashed him a challenging grin, then taken off at high speed across the moors; any sign of fear had disappeared. He had thought then that nothing on earth could dim her light. She had been his ethereal phoenix, blazing bright, resilient, and indomitable.
“Do you remember when we were children and you fell from your horse?” he asked, unable to let the moment of nostalgia pass without sharing it.
She looked up at him in surprise. “I do.” She nodded. “You wrapped my wound.”
“It was one of the few times in our lives that I had ever seen you frightened,” he noted. “It was the only time that you ever allowed me to help you.”
Emmeline smiled. “My father’s brother had fallen from his horse, breaking his leg. The wound grew putrid, and the physician had been forced to take the leg. I was afraid that I had broken my arm and that it would be removed,” she confessed.
Michael nodded in understanding. “That explains your fear and swift recovery.”
Emmeline laughed softly. “I still beat you back to the stables.”
Michael chuckled. “Indeed, you did.”
Their eyes met, and a glimmer of the old friendship that they had once shared passed between them. Before they had been in love, they had been inseparable companions. Perhaps instead of the barrier that their past had built, their childhood friendship could be a bridge to healing the wound between them.
Chapter 7
“How is your courtship progressing with the charming Mr. Barrington?” Louisa asked Rebecca, as she strolled arm in arm with Emmeline down the length of Shepherd Market.
Louisa blushed. “Most pleasantly,” she admitted. “There is even less tension between Emmeline and the earl.”
Louisa’s brows rose in surprise as she turned her gaze to Emmeline. “Oh?”
Emmeline shrugged in answer. “We spoke briefly of our childhood during a promenade of Hyde Park while chaperoning Rebecca and Mr. Barrington.”
“It is a beginning,” Louisa noted with approval.
“I would not place much hope upon it,” Emmeline advised. “It was a fleeting moment of nostalgia, nothing more.”
Before Louisa could question her further, their conversation was interrupted by Rebecca suddenly darting into the crowd.
