Page 84 of Emma & Edmund

"You saidno? Are you insane?"

Perhaps she was. Seeing Margaret's shocked face, with wide eyes and opened mouth, she couldn't help but feel the same aghast. Even still, the truth of the situation was still what it was.

"There was no chance on God's Earth that I could have married him."

"Why not? Curious to see what awaited you in London? Well, the news is out, my dear Emma. Nothing but cruel eyes and whispers behind hands. I will suffer the same for talking to you right now, but mine will fade. Why would you deny him when you know yours won't?"

"It's more complicated than I can even begin to explain."

Exasperation overtook Margaret's face, but distinct patience led her words.

"It didn't seem like very much in the countryside was even close to complicated."

"If only you knew..."

A harsh sigh ripped from her throat and Margaret flicked the ends of the scarf out of her hand. "Fine. I tried. Do as you wish, just as you always have."

With poise supported through anger and frustration, Margaret turned to leave but only made it two steps before she paused again. "But if you want my advice, not that you were ever good at taking it, hop in a carriage this instant and go eat crow at his doorstep. I may have had many offers, but I never experienced such visceral affection before I saw him with you."

Her head held high, Margaret strolled right through the center of their audience, breaking them like Noah and the sea, departing the store without a backward look.

And just like that, Emma was alone once more.

Chapter 24

On the morning of the Tate wedding, Emma roused with a terrible pain in her temples.

Not that it mattered much. With her family's invitation never materializing, it wasn't as if she had somewhere to be. If her very brain wouldn't scream at her for doing so, she could glance out the window of her bedroom and watch the maids she had known since childhood scuttle up and down the road, picking up cakes from the corner shop and flowers from the stands.

She wondered if Heidi felt the isolation she did. After all, it was her friends out and about right then, and all the Thompson maid was accomplishing was providing her young employer with wet rags for a forehead that did not burn.

Emma's ache was deeper than a fever.

Margaret's disappointed eyes gazed at her each time Emma closed her own, but it wasn't Margaret's voice in her ear. Just as all the times before, she couldn’t stop the tears from forming as she thought of him.

This all must mean something.

I love you, Emma. And that's all I'll ever need in the face of evil.

Throwing the duvet over her head, Emma groaned into her pillow. Love was the furthest thing from her mind when Edmund spoke those words. It didn't stop the memory of them from filling her with warmth, immediately shadowed by shame.

She knew full well how deeply the words she threw at him cut, even calculated that into her choice in the moment.

She didn't know if his face fell more at the monstrous label she slapped upon him or her denial of his love.

How much it must have hurt him, Emma could barely understand.

Emma Thompson lied that day. Lied to save her life, lied to cling to her feeble morality and ethics. Lied to protect herself.

And only then, with a pounding in her head and hidden from the world under a puffy, white blanket, could she finally admit it.

Emma never felt happier, more content, more pretty than when she was by his side. His bright smile burned on her soul, the memory of it warming her even now.

It all could only mean one thing.

She loved Edmund Lockhart. She must have long before he fully took her body, must have been what the flutters in her stomach meant. Even if she denied them, their presence was always there.

She could love him until Judgement Day, but that wouldn't make that morning - nor any morning to come - her own cherished wedding day.

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