Page 18 of A Highly Unlikely Duchess
“It was not improper,” Emily said. “It was a gesture. Nothing more. We danced, but we aren’t exactly courting. It was a single evening at Faithcourt. “
“A gesture from the Duke of Carrowell is not nothing,” Sarah said. “People saw. People talked. By this morning, it was in two drawing rooms, and by this afternoon, I would not be surprised if it had reached the scandal sheets.” She crossed the room and sat down across from her daughter. “If you are not actually courting this man, you need to be very careful about how this appears.”
“For your sake, it had better be true that he is courting you,” Charles said, from behind his newspaper. “I will not have the Pierce name dragged through the gutter because of your sister’s lack of discretion.”
Emily looked at her father. He had not lowered the paper. He did not need to. His voice carried everything his expression did not bother to show.
“You have one month, Emily,” he said. Simply. Plainly. “Just one more month. One month before the Season ends. One month before, I did what I said I would do.”
The fire crackled. The clock ticked.
She had known this was coming. She had known it since the morning six weeks ago, when everything had changed, when the letter had arrived, and her world had quietly rearranged itself around a fact she had not been prepared for.
The room felt suddenly very small. Emily felt the walls closing in, the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner sounding like a countdown. She was running out of time. That much was true. One month before her father’s patience ran out.
The deal they had struck was brutal. Her sister and her husband had died in a carriage accident only months ago, leaving behind a trail of grief and a six-year-old boy named Frederick whose existence had been hidden away from the entire Ton. When Emily had discovered him and brought him home, her father had seen not a grandson, but a stain.
Frederick was the only reminder she had of her sister, Anne. He was all that remained of her disowned, forgotten, never-spoken-of sister. A boy with his mother's eyes and a scar on his cheek, and no one left in the world who was willing to claim him.
Emily had gone to her father the morning after the letter arrived. She had sat in this very room, in this very chair, and made a deal with her parents because that was the only language her father used for things that inconvenienced him.
He liked to deal.
The deal had been simple. Emily would find a husband before the end of the Season. A suitable one, a powerful one, one whose name and position would be enough to absorb a complication of this kind without damage to the family. If she managed that, Charles would say nothing further about Frederick. The child would be Emily's concern, and Emily's alone. He would not interfere.
If she did not manage it, Charles would handle the matter himself. He was going to send Frederick to an orphanage.
“I am aware of the timeline,” Emily said.
“Then I suggest that two dances and a hand kiss become something considerably more substantial... and quickly,” her father said, turning a page.
“The child is the image of her, Papa,” Emily said, her voice dropping. “Every time he speaks, it is Anne's voice. Does that not mean anything to you? Even now that she is gone?”
Her father’s face went from granite to a bruised, angry purple. He looked through the window, as if searching for a way to strike the very memory of Anne from the London skyline.
“Anne died to this family six years ago when she climbed out of a second-story window to throw her life away on a music teacher with nothing but a fiddle and a fast horse,” he barked, the words hitting the air like physical blows. “Eloping with a commoner! We do not speak her name in this house. We do not discuss her choices, and we certainly do not sentimentalize the consequence of her ruin.”
“She was your daughter.” Emily’s poise slipped, a jagged edge of grief cutting through her exterior. “You used to love her, to adore her. You compared me to her so much. She died in a muddy ditch in the rain, and all you can talk about is the Pierce name?”
“Enough!” Her mother’s voice was a sharp, thin whistle. She was clutching her handkerchief so tightly her knuckles were white as bone. “Emily, stop this at once. Your father is trying to save what is left of us. You think you are the only one who feels the weight of this? I lost a daughter twice. Once to her own folly and once to the grave. I will not lose my position in society because you insist on dragging her ghost into the drawing room.”
“Anne has been dead for only a few months...” Emily said without stopping to think. “...And we still cannot say her name in this house.”
Sarah's hands stilled in her lap.
“Emily,” her father said—a warning.
“I am simply observing,” Emily said. “We have been in this room for twenty minutes discussing the Duke of Carrowell, Frederick's future in an orphanage, how I am running out of time, and neither of you has once mentioned his mother. Your daughter.”
“That is enough,” Charles said.
“She has been dead for two months,” Emily said again. Not loudly. Simply with the precision of someone making a point they had been holding for a long time and had decided, tonight, to set down. “She left behind a child who has nobody, and we are sitting here talking about reputations and seasons and?—”
“Emily.” Her mother's voice was not sharp. “Go to your chambers. I think you should retire for the night.”
Emily looked at her mother. At the hands fisted on both sides. At the line of her mouth, pressed together the way it pressed together when Sarah Pierce was feeling something she had decided not to feel.
“She made her choice,” Charles said, from behind the newspaper. “She knew what it meant.”
