The Marriage Wager (19 page)

Robin was standing before the fireplace when she entered the drawing room, half turned away, kicking at an ember that had fallen from the coals with his highly polished Hessian boot. He was gravitating toward the dandy set, Emma decided, taking in the massively padded shoulders of his coat, the strangling height and complexity of his neckcloth, and a waistcoat in astonishing stripes of yellow and orange. He didn’t need to go to such extremes, she thought. He was quite an attractive youth without any embellishments. “Hello, Robin,” she said, smiling and moving into the room. At once, he turned to face her, and she was struck again by his strong resemblance to their dead mother.

“Hullo,” he replied. “That toploftly butler said you wouldn’t wish to see me, but those fellows are always trying to fob one off.”

He spoke with a mixture of bravado and uneasiness that prevented Emma from telling him she was worn out. “Sit down,” she suggested, and subsided gratefully onto the sofa.

“I wanted to call at once because I didn’t get to see you before you left town,” he added. “The thing is, I didn’t know where you were staying.”

“I must have forgotten to tell you. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, well.”

How soft the sofa cushions were, Emma thought. Almost as comfortable as her bed.

“And I wanted to apologize.” He flushed. “At the wedding, you know. I had a bit too much champagne. Not used to it. Those soldiers. Made a muck of my toast.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Emma assured him.

“Does,” he insisted. “I wanted to make a good showing, you know. Only brother. All those Warehams about. Have to hold up our end.”

“It was all right,” said Emma sleepily.

“They laughed,” objected Robin, as if he were accusing her.

One could practically lie down on this sofa, it was so broad, Emma thought. And most importantly, it did not bounce or tilt or throw one suddenly into a hard coach corner. It was heaven. “They didn’t mean anything by it,” she responded dreamily. “You have to admit it was rather funny.”

Robin’s flush deepened. “I don’t see the joke,” he replied, aggrieved. “I might have hurt myself, you know. Falling like that.”

“Well, I’m sure you will not drink so much again.” This sofa was like floating, Emma thought. She would just close her eyes for a moment, only a moment.

“Now you sound like Father,” complained Robin.

“Do I?” murmured Emma. “How dreadful.”

“I thought you were different.”

“I am,” said Emma, forcing her eyes open again. Sleep was dragging at her like a drug. She couldn’t recall when she had been this tired.

“I had hoped that we might become acquainted,” Robin continued. “For one thing, it’s deuced odd, having a sister one hardly knows. People think you’re some sort of fool.”

“Yes,” said Emma, her voice a bit slurred with fatigue. “We must learn all about each other quite soon. Let us set a day to…”

Looking pleased, Robin scooted the chair in which he was sitting closer to the sofa. “Well, you know, right after you, er, went away, they sent me off to school. Awful place up north. Cold as… cold as ice. And the masters were horrid. Not one of them less than sixty. They made us wear knee breeches and…” He launched into a detailed history of his troubles during his early years at school.

In a distant sort of way, Emma realized that Robin was complaining about the dreariness of his school holidays. She felt as if the sofa were a deliciously comfortable, huge white cloud, and she was sinking slowly into it—down, down.

“But Father just left me there, no matter what I told him. Kept on saying I needed discipline. That discipline was the most important thing in life.”

She had to fight her lassitude, Emma thought. Robin was speaking to her. But somehow, his words were merging into a dream of the sound of ocean waves at Trevallan. A soothing rhythm that was utterly impossible to resist.

Robin went on talking, covering each of his years at school and a long succession of disputes with his father. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen.

“So I came up to town for good eight months ago,” he went on. “He couldn’t keep me away any longer. And I’ve been on the toddle every since.” His pride in using this bit of slang was palpable.

“London suits me down to the ground,” he added. “I think I shall be a great success here, if only…”

Pausing, Robin cleared his throat.

He had come to the crucial part of his speech—the place where he revealed their father’s shocking rigidity about money and recruited his unknown sister as an ally. Since the first proof of her sympathy was to be a rather large loan, he was finding this part of the conversation difficult. Looking at the floor, Robin stumbled through the words he had spent days composing. He had so wanted to appear urbane and sophisticated before Emma.

At last, it was over. He had said it all. As he waited for her reaction, his eyes remained on the carpet. Anything would be all right as long as she didn’t mock him, he thought.

The silence lengthened. The soft pop of the dying fire was fully audible.

Had he made her angry? Robin wondered. Or was she just trying to decide how to refuse? Unable to stand the suspense, he sneaked a sidelong look at her, keeping his head bent.

Robin’s pale brows came together. He straightened. Unable to accept what he saw, he rose and took a step forward. It was true. His eyes hadn’t deceived him. She was fast asleep. “Blast it!” he exclaimed, quite loudly.

“Uhh.” Emma jerked awake and blinked up at him, seeming, briefly, to wonder who he was.

“That tears it,” said Robin savagely.

“I… oh dear. Did I drop off? I am so sorry. It was such a long journey, and the inn last night was dreadful—”

“It is I who must apologize,” interrupted Robin through clenched teeth. “I did not realize I was such a
bore
. You may be sure I will not trouble you with my… my dull conversation ever again.”

“Oh, Robin.” His face was red. He was working himself into a tantrum. Things were so hard when you were that young, Emma recalled.

“If you are going to mock me…!”

“I wasn’t mocking,” Emma protested.

He ignored her. “Then it’s best that I go,” he said, his voice throbbing with emotion. He made a gesture, as if throwing something away, and stormed out. Struggling up from the deep sofa cushions, Emma heard him thundering down the stairs to the front hall. He was calling stridently for his hat as she hurried to the stairs. And by the time she reached the hall, he was gone.

“An impetuous young man,” commented Clinton, with what seemed to Emma a hint of smug satisfaction.

“Oh, damn,” she said.

Clinton raised his eyebrows.

Emma gave him a look that caused him to lower them again, and to stand up even straighter, which hardly seemed possible. Satisfied, she turned and marched up the curving staircase toward her bedchamber, determined that nothing would prevent her from reaching it this time.

Nothing did. But unfortunately, the abrupt ending of her encounter with Robin had driven off sleep, at least temporarily. She would, however, have her tea at last, thought Emma, ringing the bell and ordering a pot when the maid appeared. By the time she had removed her crumpled gown and slipped into a wrapper, the girl had brought the tray, and Emma settled into an armchair with a steaming cup beside her and her feet on a footstool. So far, it was not particularly pleasant to be back in London, she thought. And it was perfectly obvious that more difficulties with both Ferik and Robin lay ahead. She felt a moment’s sharp longing for the peace and beauty of Trevallan, and at once suppressed it. Colin wanted to be here. His friends were here. And she had determined to make a success of life in London, as he wished. There was a pile of mail awaiting her on the small desk in the corner. Many of the envelopes had the heavy, square look of invitations. Tomorrow she would open and accept them all. Tomorrow.

Emma rested her head on the chair back. The tea was just right; her headache was receding. She wondered if Colin had already gone to bed.

As if cued, he opened the door between their adjoining chambers and came in. “I thought you would be fast asleep by this time,” he said.

“There were… things to take care of,” she answered.

“Ah, yes. Domestic harmony restored?”

Clearly, he had dismissed all concern about the scene when they arrived, Emma thought somewhat enviously. She nodded.

Colin came to sit in the other armchair, stretching his long legs out before him on the thick carpet. “You know, I’ve often wondered how you acquired an attendant such as Ferik. Hardly a usual choice for a lady.”

“It wasn’t exactly a choice,” said Emma.

“Why does that fail to surprise me?” replied her husband with a humorous look.

“Yes, Ferik has his own mind,” she acknowledged, smiling in response. “But it wasn’t he, so much as the circumstances.”

“And what were they?”

Emma looked down. “We were traveling toward Constantinople, and we had stopped for the night at a village… I suppose you would have to call it an inn, though I’m reluctant to honor it with the name.”

Colin examined her face, though she continued to gaze at the floor.

“They had nothing decent to eat there, so I determined to visit the market that was set up in the village square and purchase some provisions for our dinner. I enlisted two of the… employees of the inn to accompany me.”

“And where was the unlamented Edward?” Colin inquired tersely.

Emma grimaced. “He had already found a game of some sort and would not be pulled away from it.”

Colin sat up straight. “Your husband allowed you to set off alone with two strangers from a mean inn in a Turkish village?”

She shrugged.

He made a sound rather like a snarl.

“We walked to the market and I began to examine the foodstuffs offered. It was very colorful, and there was a wonderful smell of spices.” Emma looked distant, remembering. “I did notice that people stared at me,” she went on. “Almost all the women there wear veils over their faces, so it was obvious I was a foreigner. At any rate, all seemed well until I took out my purse to pay for the things I had chosen. I didn’t have a great deal of money, but most likely it was still a fortune to the men escorting me.”

“Very likely,” growled Colin.

“One of them grabbed me from behind, and the other pulled out some sort of club, I believe to knock me unconscious.”

“My God, Emma!”

“I was quite frightened,” she admitted.

“Do you know there is a flourishing slave trade in Turkey?” he demanded.

“It’s odd that you should mention it, because of what happened next,” she said. “I was struggling as hard as I could, in vain, when I heard a kind of roaring sound. The next thing I knew, the man holding me had let go, so quickly that I fell to my knees on the ground.”

Colin muttered something inaudible.

“When I looked around, I saw what looked like a giant attacking the two who had tried to rob me. He was shouting at them in their own language, which of course I did not understand. But his meaning was clear.”

“Indeed?”

“Curses,” she elaborated. “He hit one of them hard enough to send him flying. Then he threw the club over the heads of people nearby. It clattered when it landed.”

She remembered it all so vividly, Emma thought. Fear had engraved it on her memory.

“The men ran away. A crowd started to gather around us. And I saw that some of them were pulling at my rescuer as if to draw him away. And then I saw that he was bound with long heavy chains on his wrists and ankles.” Finally, she turned and looked at Colin.

“Ah.”

“He was for sale!” she informed him.

“Was he?”

“Yes.” Emma clenched her fists just thinking of it. “Can you imagine anything more horrible?”

“A barbaric practice,” Colin agreed.

“No one there seemed to think so. They just stood and watched as he was taken away. One of his captors even had a whip!”

He watched her face.

“He looked down at me, not pleading, you understand, not as if he expected anything from me.”

“Certainly not.”

Emma frowned slightly. “He didn’t, Colin.”

“Very well.”

“Naturally, I had to buy him.”

“Naturally.”

“Well, I could not just leave him in that condition after he had saved me.”

Colin said nothing.

“And he has been completely loyal to me ever since and an indispensable guardian in… in any number of situations.”

Colin scowled. He hated to think of the situations in which Emma had found herself. Ferik had his gratitude, he thought, and a place in his household no matter how troublesome. But he could not help but wonder. “Did he ever confide the, er, reason for his predicament?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Why was he being sold?” Colin elucidated.

“Oh. He was in debt.”

“Ah.” That was much better than it might have been, Colin thought.

“He had tried to open a hostelry of his own in the village, a better one than the place we stayed. But he didn’t have enough money to back it properly, and a string of bad luck drove him out of business.”

“I see.”

“And then he
belonged
to his creditors,” she added. “Can you imagine such a thing?”

“It is rather harsh.”

“It is outrageous.”

“But you saved him from his fate.”

“And gave him his freedom at once, of course.”

“It goes without saying.”

Emma looked at him. “Are you laughing at me?”

“On the contrary. I am most admiring. I am trying to think of any other woman of my acquaintance who could have thrown off the effects of such an attack and gone on to purchase a gigantic slave with such aplomb.”

Emma considered this. “What else could I have done?” she wondered.

“Fallen into a fit of hysterics?” he suggested. “Fainted from the strain? Burst into tears?”

She cocked her head. “What good would that have done anyone?”

Colin started laughing. “Not a particle of good, my indomitable Emma,” he replied.

***

The new Baroness St. Mawr walked slowly across the square toward her London town house, preoccupied with the two scraps of wallpaper she held. She looked back and forth between them, unable to decide which she would prefer to have hung in her bedchamber in Cornwall. “What do you think, Ferik?” she asked, holding them up so that her giant servant could see them. “Do you like the rose garlands, or the stripes?”