To Taste Temptation

Page 20

EMELINE PAUSED JUST inside Samuel’s town house garden. What was Rebecca doing with Mr. Thornton—alone?
“You may go now,” she said absently to the butler who had shown her the way through the town house and into the garden.
She’d come calling in the hopes of finding Rebecca better. Perhaps they could go hunting for a pair of dancing slippers. New slippers always cheered Emeline up, and she felt the poor girl might need some reviving after the events of last night.
It seemed Rebecca was already revived.
Emeline squared her shoulders. “Good afternoon.”
Rebecca jumped back from Mr. Thornton and turned a woefully guilty face toward Emeline.
Mr. Thornton, in contrast, pivoted smoothly. “Lady Emeline, how pleasant to meet you again.”
Emeline narrowed her eyes. It was a point in the man’s favor that he’d been properly introduced to Rebecca, but it still didn’t excuse his tête-à-tête with an unattended maiden. And in any case, it seemed odd to find Mr. Thornton in the garden with Rebecca so soon after talking about him with Samuel and Jasper. Very odd.
“Mr. Thornton.” Emeline inclined her head. “How...unexpected to meet you here. Do you have business with Mr. Hartley?”
He smiled wider at her pointed question. “Yes, but it seems Mr. Hartley isn’t at home. I was waiting here in the garden when Miss Hartley joined me and made my wait so much easier.” He finished his pretty speech with a courtly little bow in Rebecca’s direction.
Humph. Emeline linked her arm with Rebecca and began to stroll. “I believe you said you were in trade, Mr. Thornton.”
The garden path was narrow, and the man was forced to trail behind the ladies. “Yes, I make boots.”
“Boots. Ah, I see.” Emeline didn’t bother looking around. The town house garden was mediocre, but she kept her pace slow as if she might actually be interested in dying foliage.
“Boots are very important, I’m sure,” Rebecca said, coming to Mr. Thornton’s defense, which was not at all what Emeline had intended.
“I supply them to His Majesty’s army,” Mr. Thornton called from in back.
“Quite.” It occurred to Emeline that Mr. Thornton might very well be rich. She had so little knowledge of the workings of the army, but she could imagine the piles of boots that would be ordered from Mr. Thornton.
“Are they made here in London?” Rebecca asked. She craned her neck a little to try to see him.
“Oh, yes. I have a workshop on Dover Street and employ thirty-two fellows there.”
“Then you do not make the boots yourself?” Emeline inquired sweetly.
Rebecca gasped, but Mr. Thornton replied cheerfully enough, “No, my lady. I’m afraid I wouldn’t even know where to start. Father used to, of course, when he began the business, but before long he’d hired other fellows to do the work for him. I might’ve learned when I was young, but I had a falling-out with Pater—”
“Is that why you joined the army?” Rebecca interrupted. She stopped and turned to face Mr. Thornton, and Emeline was forced to halt as well.
Mr. Thornton smiled, and Emeline realized that he was rather handsome in a bland sort of way. He wasn’t the type of man one would notice in a crowd, but perhaps that made him all the more dangerous.
“Yes, I’m afraid I took the king’s shilling in a fit of callow pique. Left Pater and my wife—”
“You’re married?” Emeline cut in.
“No.” Mr. Thornton’s expression sobered. “Poor Marie died not long after I returned home.”
“Oh! I am so sorry,” Rebecca murmured.
Emeline looked back down the path. Someone was coming.
“It was a terrible blow,” Mr. Thornton said. “She—”
“Emmie! Ah, there you are.” Jasper was striding up the path, his long, horsey face beaming.
Mr. Thornton stopped and turned at the sound of Jasper’s voice, his features going curiously blank. But Jasper wasn’t who she had expected. Confusion and a kind of disappointment shot through her, and then she saw him. Behind Jasper, Samuel followed, his eyes hooded, his expression sober.
Emeline held out her hands. “Why, Jasper, I did not expect you back until nightfall, if at all. Have you been successful in your investigations?”
Jasper took her hands and bent over them, brushing a kiss against her knuckles. “We lost the trail, alas, and went hunting Mr. Thornton instead. Except he wasn’t at his business, and we retired here in defeat only to find you have supplied the man we looked for.”
By this time, Samuel had caught up to Jasper. “Lady Emeline, Rebecca.” He nodded at them and then held out a hand to his guest. “Mr. Thornton, it is good to see you, although I confess some surprise at finding you at my house.”
Mr. Thornton grasped Samuel’s hand in both of his. “You are no more surprised than I, Mr. Hartley. I had not intended to presume upon your hospitality, but I was in the area, and my feet led me to your house whether I willed it so or not.”
“Indeed?” Samuel cocked his head, watching the other man.
“Yes. Maybe it was our reminiscences of the war the other day. I...” He hesitated a moment, looking down before raising his gaze to stare frankly in Samuel’s eyes. “You will think me an imaginative fellow, but I had the sensation when we talked that you did not think what happened at Spinner’s Falls occurred by happenstance.”
There was a silence as both men looked at each other. Samuel was fully a head taller than the other man, but there were certain similarities otherwise that were hard to overlook. They were both self-made men who worked in trade. They both carried themselves with a certain raw confidence, an ability to look a higher-born gentleman in the eye and dare him to make comment. And, Emeline sensed, to have succeeded in what they did, both men would have had to be daring. They were men who could see a chance and seize it, knowing the consequences might very well be dangerous.
At last, Samuel glanced sideways at her and Rebecca. He cleared his throat. “Perhaps if the ladies permit, we gentlemen should retire to my study inside to discuss this in private.”
Emeline arched an eyebrow. Did he really think she could be fobbed off that easily? “Oh, I’m most interested in what you have to say to Mr. Thornton. Please. Continue.”
“I say, Emmie,” Jasper began rather nervously.
She didn’t look at Jasper, her eyes holding Samuel’s gaze. “It’s the least you can do, don’t you think?”
She saw a muscle in his jaw flex, and he certainly didn’t look happy, but he nodded before turning to Mr. Thornton. “We were betrayed.”
Emeline felt a flicker of satisfaction. Samuel treated her as an equal, and that kind of trust was curiously heady.
Then Mr. Thornton blew out a breath. “I knew it.”
“Did you?” Samuel asked softly.
“At the time, no.” Mr. Thornton looked grim now. “But there were so many circumstances that had to align correctly for us to have been attacked at that point, and the fact that the Indians numbered so many”—he shook his head—“the thing must have been planned by someone.”
“That’s what it looks like,” Jasper finally spoke. “We had meant to ask you if you were certain that MacDonald and Brown were dead.”
“MacDonald?” For a moment, Mr. Thornton looked confused; then he glanced quickly at the ladies and nodded. “Oh, of course. I see where your thoughts lie, but I’m afraid both men were quite dead. I helped bury them.”
Emeline pursed her lips, wondering for a moment what the men weren’t saying about MacDonald. She’d have to ask Samuel later, in private.
“Damn,” Jasper muttered. “If it’d been MacDonald, it would’ve wrapped this up neatly. Nevertheless, we have a few more questions to make of you.”
“Perhaps we should adjourn inside,” Samuel said. He held his arm out to his sister, but Rebecca ignored it and took Mr. Thornton’s instead. Samuel’s lips thinned.
Emeline hated to see him hurt. She laid her hand on Samuel’s sleeve. “What a good idea. I’d enjoy some tea.”
Samuel glanced from her eyes to her hand and back again. His brows rose almost imperceptibly. She tilted her chin at him. But the others were moving toward the back of the town house now.
“I don’t know if I can be of any use,” Mr. Thornton was saying ahead of them. “The man you really ought to talk to is Corporal Craddock.”
“Why is that?” Samuel called to him.
Mr. Thornton looked over his shoulder. “He gathered the wounded after Spinner’s Falls, after you’d...Well, you’d run into the woods. I guess you could say he was the officer in charge.”
Emeline felt Samuel’s arm stiffen under her fingers, but he didn’t say anything.
Jasper seemed not to have noticed that Mr. Thornton had nearly called Samuel a coward to his face. “Is he here in town?”
“No. I believe he retired to the country after the war. I could be wrong, of course; one hears so many things. But I think he’s in Sussex, near Portsmouth.”
Emeline thought she hid it well, but Samuel must’ve felt her start nonetheless.
“What is it?” he murmured without taking his eyes from the path ahead.
She hesitated. She’d just sorted her stack of invitations this morning, trying to determine the social events that would be best to attend in the upcoming month.
He looked at her, his brows drawn. “Tell me.”
Really, what choice did she have? It was almost as if the Fates had arranged the trap, and she was the unlucky hare that had run straight into it. Was there any point in struggling at all?
“We’ve been invited to the Hasselthorpe estate in Sussex.”
“What’s this?” Jasper had halted and turned.
“Lord and Lady Hasselthorpe, dear. Remember? They invited us weeks ago, and their house isn’t far from Portsmouth.”
“Damn me, you’re right.” The furrows next to Jasper’s nose and mouth stretched into arcs as he grinned. “What a stroke of luck! We can all go to this house party and then call on Craddock. That is...” He looked worriedly at Mr. Thornton. Rebecca and Samuel were easily included in the invitation as friends of Emeline’s. A bootmaker—even a very rich one—was a different matter.
But Mr. Thornton grinned and winked. “Never fear, I can continue our inquiries here in London whilst you talk to Craddock.”
And like that, Emeline knew that it was all decided. Her breath seemed to grow short as if her chest were being squeezed. Oh, they would argue and discuss the details back and forth, and she would need to petition Lady Hasselthorpe for invitations for the Hartleys, but in the end, it would all work out. She would be attending a house party with Samuel.
She looked up, knowing that he was watching her, and as her eyes met his warm coffee-brown ones, she wondered, Did he know what went on at house parties?
Chapter Nine
Now, of all the things in the world that the king loved, he loved his daughter most of all. He so doted on her that whenever she asked for a thing, he did his utmost to see that she received it. Which is why, when Princess Solace begged the king for permission to marry her own guard, instead of being a trifle tetchy as most royal parents might, he simply sighed and nodded. And that is how Iron Heart came to marry the most beautiful maiden in the land and a princess to boot....
—from Iron Heart
“Will you be gone a very long time?” Daniel asked a week later.
He was lying on Emeline’s bed, head hanging off one end, both feet in the air, completely in the way of Harris, who was packing.
“Probably a fortnight,” Emeline said briskly. She sat at her pretty little dresser trying to decide which jewelry to bring to the Hasselthorpe house party.