To Taste Temptation (Legend of the Four Soldiers #1)(74)

Oh, how she wanted to! The urge to simply spill all her secrets was nearly overpowering. What a relief it would be if she could tell him everything and he would pat her shoulder and say, “There, there.”

Except he wouldn’t. Jasper might be the closest thing she had to a brother, he might be scandalously liberal about love affairs and matters of the flesh, but when you came right down to it, he was a viscount. He was expected to sire an heir to a very old and very respected family. The knowledge that his fiancée had been meeting secretly with another man would not bring him joy. He might hide it, but in the end, Emeline very much feared that he would care.

So she pasted on a smile and lied. “I can’t stand it here anymore. I really can’t. I know I should be more patient and bear with Lady Hasselthorpe and her awful conversation and this dreadful house party, but I can’t. Do you think you could take me back to London, Jasper? Please?”

His face as he watched her make this speech was disconcertingly blank. Odd that such a manic man, a man with many comical expressions should, when he chose, be utterly impossible to read. But when she came to the end and there was an awful dead silence, he suddenly sprang forward, his face animated once more as if a toymaker had turned the key on a very clever windup toy.

“Naturally, dear Emmie, naturally! I shall have my bag packed in a thrice. Can our flight wait for the morning, or...?”

“Today, if you don’t mind. Now, please.” Emeline nearly wept with relief when he simply nodded.

He leaned forward and bussed her cheek. “I’d best alert Pynch.” And he strode off.

Emeline paused a moment to gather her sensibilities. Horrible, this constant feeling of losing control over her emotions. She’d always thought of herself as a levelheaded woman. The unemotional one, the one who others leaned on. She’d hardly wept when Father had died; she’d been too busy packing up Tante Cristelle, overseeing the succession of the estate to the next earl, and settling their decimated family in London. Then people had been admiring, almost awed by her good sense and stoicism. Now she was like an infant—shook by whatever emotion stormed over her.

She made her way back to her room, always alert like some woodland animal afraid of the hunter. And that was quite apropos, wasn’t it? Samuel was a hunter—a good one, too. He’d hunted her down this morning, chased her into a corner, and had had his way with her. She grimaced. No, that wasn’t exactly right. Samuel might’ve chased her, but she’d been thrilled to be caught; and while he’d had his way with her, she’d been having her way with him. That was the real problem. She had no defenses against the man. She’d never thought of herself as being a slave to the flesh, but here she was fleeing a man because she could not withstand his advances. Evidently she’d been a wanton all these years and not even known it. Either that, or it was the man involved.

But she pushed that thought away as she entered her room. Harris was supervising the packing of all her things with the help of two maids from the house.

The lady’s maid looked up as Emeline entered. “We shall be ready in a half hour more, should it please your ladyship.”

“Thank you, Harris.”

Emeline peeked out the door, scanning the hallway before venturing forth again. She’d rather spend that half hour hiding in her room where it was relatively safe, but her presence would only impede Harris’s well-organized packing campaign. Besides, she couldn’t in all conscience leave so abruptly without talking to Melisande.

Her friend’s door was only a few down in the same hallway, and Emeline swiftly crept to it. Melisande should be downstairs already, waiting with the other guests, but she had a habit of arriving late to a gathering. Emeline had long suspected that her friend’s tardiness was a ruse to keep from having to engage in conversation. Melisande was rather shy, although she hid her affliction well beneath a carapace of aloofness and sarcasm.

Emeline scratched at the door. There was a rustle within, and then Melisande cracked the door. She cocked an eyebrow at the sight of her friend and held the door wide in silent invitation.

Emeline hurried inside. “Close the door.”

Her friend’s eyebrows winged higher. “Are we hiding?”

“Yes,” Emeline replied, and went to warm her hands by the fire.

She heard Melisande’s skirts rustling behind her. “I think it’s a Germanic dialect.”

“What?” Emeline turned to find Melisande seated in a wingback chair.

Her friend gestured to the book spread on her knees. “Your nurse’s book. I think it’s some type of Germanic dialect, probably spoken only in a small area, maybe only a village or two. I can try to translate it for you, if you like.”

Emeline stared at the book. Somehow it didn’t seem as important as it once had. “I don’t care.”

“Really?” Melisande fingered a page. “I’ve already figured out the title: Four Soldiers Returned from War and Their Adventures.”

Emeline was distracted. “But I thought it was a book of fairy tales?”

“It is, that’s the funny thing. These four soldiers all have the strangest names, like the one I told you about, Iron Heart, and—”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Emeline said, and then felt awful when her friend’s face, unusually animated, shuddered. “I’m sorry, dear, I’m a beast. Do go on.”