The Marriage Wager Read online

  Emma said nothing as she made her way downstairs. Arabella had been angling for an invitation to join tonight’s party since the moment she had heard of it. But though she felt a twinge of guilt over the matter, Emma emphatically did not want her there. A member of Edward’s family would be wholly out of place in any case, she reminded herself.

  When she entered the drawing room, Colin had his back to her, looking out the front window. Emma watched him for a moment while he was still unaware of her presence. He stood very straight, like a former soldier. His broad shoulders and fine athletic figure were perfectly set off by his dark evening clothes. His black hair curled just slightly on his neck. And yet, despite the richness of his attire and the assurance of his bearing, there was something sad about him. She couldn’t even see his face, but she could sense the melancholy hanging over him like an enveloping mist. Emma moved farther into the room. “I am ready,” she said.

  He turned, and smiled, with no hint of sadness visible. Then, as he took in her gown, her hair twisted in a glinting knot, the delicate set of her head, his smile altered a little. She was stunning, he thought. He had expected beauty, and a suitably fashionable dress, but she went far beyond what he had pictured. She had a presence, an impact, that filled the room. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. “Beautiful,” he said, inadequately.

  Emma enjoyed the admiration in his eyes. She did a little pirouette and said, “The lamb is ready for the slaughter, my lord.”

  He laughed. “Nonsense. They will be bowled over.” He offered his arm. “Unless we are late. Then Great-Aunt Celia will drag us both over the coals.”

  Taking his arm, Emma looked up at him. This moment felt weighted with significance. After tonight, it would be impossible to go back, to change their minds about the marriage or admit they’d made a mistake. Had she? Emma wondered. For a woman who hated gaming, she was taking a huge gamble, wagering her entire life. She had made such a reckless choice seven years before, she thought, and regretted it bitterly ever since.

  “What is it?” said Colin.

  Emma swallowed. “Are you sure?” she asked, a wealth of meaning vibrating in the three words.

  He did not ask what she was talking about. “As sure as it is possible to be,” he replied.

  She drew back a little. “What does that mean?”

  His eyes, steady on hers, were full of shadowed depths. “I have spent the last eight years of my life never certain whether I would see another day,” he said. “There were so many times when I might have been killed.”

  “But you weren’t,” she put in, unsettled by the thought of such an existence.

  “No. But friends were, men under my command. Cut down before they were twenty, some of them.”

  Emma’s eyes widened.

  “I concluded that you cannot count on the future. There is no guarantee of tomorrow. We must simply do the best we can with the moments we have.”

  A dark philosophy, Emma thought; not one she shared, despite everything that had happened to her. But something in his face, his eyes, had answered her inner questioning. “And I must spend some of my precious moments being scrutinized by your family?” she asked in a much lighter tone.

  “No one will slight you,” he said. “You may count on that.”

  Slightly startled by his vehemence, Emma blinked.

  “We must go,” he added. “Aunt Celia is rabid on the subject of punctuality.”

  “Then by all means, let us go,” she said, moving with him toward the door. “I don’t wish to set her against me from the very first.”

  Arabella, lurking at the darkened front parlor window, watched them walk out together. They were the handsomest couple she had ever seen, she thought. Both tall with long, easy strides; both powerful personalities, although she was not sure they were fully aware of it; both charming when they wanted to be; and both somehow different, not like the rest of the fashionable set. She tried to put her finger on just what it was that set them apart. A certain solitude, even in the midst of people, she thought; an almost brooding quality? Arabella shook her head. She was being fanciful. What mattered was that it was an excellent match, and that she had had a hand in making it. Once again, she congratulated herself. Better times were definitely ahead.

  “Tell me who will be at dinner,” said Emma when they were settled in his carriage.

  “My mother; my sister Caroline and her husband Wrotham; several cousins and their assorted spouses. Remarkably assorted, in one or two cases. All presided over by Great-Aunt Celia, whom I’ve told you about.”

  “Too much, perhaps,” responded Emma. “I’m all in a quake.”

  “Yes, you look it,” he said ironically, scanning her serene expression.

  “I am mastering my emotions,” she informed him severely, “just as my dear old governess taught me to do.”

  “Admirable,” he replied with a smile. He did not believe she was truly afraid. Slightly nervous, yes. But he thought she might actually be rather excited at the challenge the evening presented, and he liked her attitude. Because he didn’t want to spoil it, he waited until they had stepped down from the carriage and were being admitted to his great-aunt’s elegant town house to add, “Your father and brother will be present as well, of course.”

  Emma froze in the act of tucking up a curl. “What?”

  “We could not do this without them,” he said. “It would look odd.”

  Her jaw set. “I don’t want to see him.”

  “Your father will be on his best behavior. Aunt Celia will see to that. I’ve told her to keep him at her side all evening.”

  Emma looked mulish.

  “You must see that to exclude your family, when they live right here in London, would look strange. It would appear that we were ashamed of them.”

  “I am! Of him, anyway.”

  “They would think it was my doing,” Colin pointed out, “that I did not care for the family I was marrying into. I wouldn’t want to give that impression.” He had thought this out carefully. Though Colin had never paid much heed to society’s rules or to what others thought of him, now that he was about to present Emma as his future wife, all that was changed. He was determined that she would not be slighted by the ton, and he was ready to do whatever was necessary to make certain of it.

  “Oh,” said Emma. He did not want to appear churlish in the eyes of his friends, she thought. No doubt their opinion was important to him. “Oh, very well.”

  “You need never see him again once we’re married,” he promised, half teasing.

  Emma’s features relaxed in a smile. “Is this how you intend to treat me then, my lord? Springing unpleasant truths upon me too late for me to do anything about them?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Invariably.”

  As he had hoped, this made her laugh a little. Thus, when they entered the drawing room side by side, the people waiting there saw a slightly smiling, apparently confident, unworried Emma, absolutely dazzling in her beautiful gown. Though her expression grew serious at once, the critical first impression had already been made, and an advantage established.

  Colin escorted her around the room with a fine sense of protocol. “My great-aunt Celia, Lady Burrington,” he said first.

  Emma dropped a small curtsy to the massive old woman who sat in a great carved chair clutching an ebony cane. The rigidly boned and constructed bodice and wide billowing skirts of her brocade gown echoed the fashions of fifty years ago. Her lace cap was perched on snowy white hair, and her hands were gnarled and twisted with age. There was nothing old about the look she gave Emma, however. It was shrewd and challenging, daring her to show her mettle. “Where’d you find that gown?” the old lady barked without preamble.

  She looked like an extremely successful bird of prey, Emma thought, one whose claws were always kept razor sharp. “A very clever Frenchwoman made it for me,
” she responded evenly. “Sophie Fisher.”

  “Fisher? Never heard of her.”

  “She is not well known in London as yet,” conceded Emma.

  “I daresay you’ll be the making of her, then,” said Lady Burrington, giving the gown another critical but approving examination.

  “That is her hope,” said Emma.

  Her hostess raised one white eyebrow. She did it just as Colin did, Emma thought. Or, she supposed, the other way around. If Emma had not seen the twinkle in the old woman’s eye, she might have thought she had offended her.

  “My mother,” said Colin, moving Emma a little to the left. “Catherine, Baroness St. Mawr.”

  “For now, at least,” was the sharp rejoinder.

  Emma was surprised to face a small woman, inches shorter than she, and very plump and pleasant-looking. She realized that she had been visualizing a large, frowning harpy, with a beak of a nose and thick eyebrows, in the role of Colin’s mother. A slight flush stained her cheeks. “How do you do?” she said.

  “Humph,” was the only reply. The baroness was openly dismayed. This elegant, imperturbable young woman was not what she had expected. Beauty, yes; that was inevitable. But Emma Tarrant had far more than beauty. She did not look at all like an interloper, or a schemer after Colin’s money and position. Where in the world had she found such self-possession, the baroness wondered, such an air?

  “My sister Caroline,” said Colin, not lingering in dangerous territory.

  “How lovely to meet you,” said Caroline, who had thrown her mother’s apprehensions to the wind at the first sight of Emma. “This is my husband, Frederick.”

  “Lord Wrotham,” supplied Colin in a murmur.

  “How do?” said the large, phlegmatic earl. Tall, broad, and blond, he looked as if his whole mind was occupied with thoughts of dinner.

  Warmed by the open friendliness in Caroline’s expression, and the lack of any hostility in her husband’s, Emma smiled. It was the first full smile she had given the group. There was a ripple of reaction. One of the young male cousins gasped audibly.

  Radiant, thought the baroness. There was no other word for the wretched woman. This was disastrous.

  They went through the line of cousins very quickly. At the end, Colin said, “And of course I do not need to introduce the rest of our party.”

  Emma had prepared herself by this time. “Of course not. Father.” She inclined her head, but did not offer to kiss him.

  “Good evening, my dear.” George Bellingham was beaming. “You’re looking very fine.”

  “Thank you.”

  Though several of the Warehams noticed the marked coolness in Emma’s voice, her father was oblivious to it. Nothing could penetrate the buoyancy of his mood tonight. This was the sort of marriage he had always imagined for his only daughter. And he was reveling in it.

  “You might have to present me,” said Robin. “I was still in short coats when Emma…” Realizing that he was about to make a serious social error, Robin Bellingham blushed to the roots of his pale hair. “Er… married,” he choked out.

  “But of course I know you,” said Emma warmly. “You are the image of our mother, Robin. How good to see you again.”

  Her brother mumbled something and effaced himself, to Colin’s profound relief. It was like riding patrol in dangerous country, he thought. The room was simmering with potential flare-ups, and he was the one designated to see that none of them erupted. He steered Emma back toward Caroline.

  The butler appeared and announced dinner. Two footmen followed close behind him. Taking up positions on either side of Lady Burrington’s great chair, they heaved her up and out of it. “Come along, Bellingham,” she commanded when she had gained her feet. “In honor of our coming relationship, you may take me in.”

  Looking both gratified and a bit cowed, Emma’s father hurried forward to offer his arm. One of the footmen remained for support on her ladyship’s other side, and in this manner she led the way into the dining room.

  Emma found herself seated between Lord Wrotham and the eldest of the male cousins, a plump, complacent man of fifty who looked like a cross between their hostess and a sheep. Colin was several chairs away, but so, she saw with gratitude, was his mother. She had no difficulty making conversation. Wrotham was happy to talk about the splendidly prepared food they were served, his two-year-old son, and hunting, which did not tax Emma’s knowledge, as he required little in the way of reply.

  When the table turned, things grew more difficult. At first it seemed that the cousin had nothing at all to say for himself, and, like a sheep indeed, he shied from the innocuous questions Emma asked. But then she happened to hit upon the subject of paintings exhibited at the Royal Academy. The timid man brightened at once, and it emerged that he was a passionate collector of all sorts of art. From then on she only had to listen while he catalogued every piece he possessed, how he had come to find it, the intricate negotiations involved in acquiring it, and how beautifully it graced his walls or cabinets or vaults. The man had an amazing memory. It appeared that he had never forgotten a single detail having to do with his collection in thirty years.

  Emma realized that she had forgotten how little was required of a younger female in society. Nodding and smiling got one through nearly anything. Except the boredom. Looking down, she noticed that she was savagely twisting her napkin between her fingers. She stopped, and when she looked up again, she found that Colin was gazing at her with such obvious, and amused, understanding that she had to smile. The baroness, intercepting the look they exchanged, saw at once that her cause was lost. She would not be separating this couple. Frustrated, she bit down hard on a lemon wafer, shattering it to crumbs that showered over the tablecloth. “Wretched thing,” she muttered, looking at the remains of the wafer with loathing. “Dry as dust.”

  Soon after this, their hostess was hoisted up again, and the ladies withdrew, leaving the men to their port. Emma entered the drawing room with caution, knowing that this was the truly hazardous part of the evening, when the guards would come off and tongues grow sharp as rapiers. She moved as far from Colin’s mother as she could, seating herself next to the wife of her dinner partner. “Your husband was telling me about his wonderful art collection,” she said.

  The lady, who didn’t look anything like a sheep, sniffed. “I’m not surprised. He thinks of little else,” she replied. “Certainly not his family.”

  “Ah,” said Emma, immediately conscious that she had made a mistake.

  “He will spend hundreds of pounds on some moldy painting,” continued the other bitterly. “But when it comes to clothing his daughters in proper style or setting a reasonable table, then we must economize. Oh, yes. Suddenly, our income becomes modest. Suddenly, we are barely able to meet our expenses. Until he uncovers some other wretched old bit of canvas or stone. Then, miraculously, money appears.” She made a broad gesture, attracting the attention of the whole room. “It is a disease,” she continued, her voice rising. “I have told the family time and again that something should be done about him. But of course, no one listens to me. No one cares that I—”

  There was a sharp thump, followed by silence. Lady Burrington had struck the floor with her ebony cane, Emma realized. And now, she was looking at each of the women in turn, like a hawk evaluating a flock of chickens. The cousin’s wife shrank down in her chair exactly like an anxious hen, her eyes fixed on the floor. Emma hid a smile.

  “Come here,” commanded their hostess, pointing at Emma.

  There was an almost imperceptible stir of relief among the others as she rose and moved to the chair beside Lady Burrington. From the frying pan into the fire, Emma thought.

  “So,” said Lady Burrington when they sat side by side. “You are to marry St. Mawr?” She did not make it sound like a settled thing.

  “It appears so, ma’am,” Emma answered.
r />   “Appears?” barked the old woman. “Is there some question?”

  “I have the feeling that your approval is an important point,” Emma replied, conscious that a number of the other guests were listening closely to their conversation.

  “Mine!” Lady Burrington snorted delicately. “You think St. Mawr cares for my opinion?”

  Emma considered. “He should,” she said finally, having thought it over.

  Looking fierce, the old woman stared at her. “Are you trying to flatter me, young woman? I despise toadies, you know.”

  She hadn’t realized it would look that way, Emma thought. She noticed Colin’s mother, sitting not far away. She looked very pleased with the way things were going. Abruptly, Emma was tired of fencing. “I wasn’t,” she said. “But think what you like.”

  “I always do,” declared her ladyship.

  For a moment, they faced each other like adversaries. For some reason, Emma remembered an occasion three years ago when an unsavory acquaintance had burst into her and Edward’s rooms at an inn and drunkenly threatened them with a pistol. Whatever happened, she thought, Lady Burrington could not shoot her. And then she realized that the strictures of society truly had no hold on her any longer. “Colin and I understand each other,” she said quietly. “Can you say the same?”

  Lady Burrington’s gaze sharpened. She looked as if she intended to search Emma’s very soul. “I don’t know,” she said finally, also in a low voice. “Possibly not.”

  Emma saw the baroness straining to overhear. She spoke even more softly. “You have heard gossip about me.” It was not a question. She knew that Lady Burrington would have gathered any information she could.

  “It does not do you justice,” was the dry reply.

  “Perhaps I am not what you wished for in Colin’s wife.”

  “I have not said so.”

  “I am not what others wished for,” said Emma with certainty. “But I think he needs…”