Page 155 of The Summer Country

Her father wasn’t really that sort of vicar, but Emily decided it wasn’t the time to go into that. “I should think I’ve compromised you,” she said, nodding toward the window, where the very silence told its own story. She couldn’t blame anyone for listening at the shutters; she would have done the same. “It’s a very good thing you’ve told them we’re engaged or your reputation would be in tatters.”

“My reputation?” said Nathaniel, raising a brow. Looking ruefully down at their scattered belongings, he said, “I’m afraid you’ll be the talk of the parish. The news will have spread clear to St. Philip by morning.”

“You’d best write your uncle, then, before he hears it from someone else.” Emily wiggled down from the table, over Nathaniel’s protests. “We’ll have to tell Laura properly, even if everyone in the parish already knows. And George. And Mrs. Davenant.”

Nathaniel grimaced at her. His hair was mussed, his lips swollen, giving him a delightfully rakish air. “Must we?”

“Oh yes.” It would, Emily thought, be rather a useful shock to Mrs. Davenant to have her plans thwarted so thoroughly for once. “I don’t mean for there to be anything the least bit hole-and-corner about our marriage. We’ll have an announcement in the papers and all that’s proper.”

Nathaniel reached for her, drawing her back to the table. “And then,” he said, his breath tickling her ear, “we can get on with being improper.”

“Yes,” said Emily breathlessly. “That.”

A short engagement, she decided, was really a very good idea. She had never understood, back in her days of delivering baskets and good advice, why so many of her father’s parish went to their weddings with swollen bellies. She rather thought she understood it better now. Much, much better. St. Paul, Emily decided, had known what he was talking about when he had said it was better to wed than to burn.

“Do you think your uncle would mind if we were wed from his house?” she asked, after some time.

“If he let us set up a hospice for cholera patients . . .” said Nathaniel, and Emily swatted his arm. Undaunted, Nathaniel smoothed back a lock of her hair that had unaccountably freed itself from its pins. “Where should you like to go on our wedding journey?”

A very long time ago, before her grandfather had died, Adam and Laura had meant to go to France on their wedding journey. Thinking of Paris made Emily remember something else.

Wiggling to a sitting position, propping herself up in the lee of Nathaniel’s arm, Emily said, “If you don’t mind it, I should like to go to Paris.”

“I don’t mind at all. Aside from the presence of the French, it’s quite a nice place.”

Emily looked at him with interest. “Have you been?”

“A time or two.” Nathaniel stretched his arms above his head, leaning back lazily against the wall. “I consulted with colleagues there. I’m sure my aunt would be delighted to send us an introduction to her milliner and modiste.”

Emily made a face at him. “Can you imagine me in French fashions? No, there’s someone I need to see, but it’s not your aunt’s modiste.”

“Or her milliner, I take it?” Seeing she was serious, Nathaniel gave her his full attention. “What is it?”

“There’s an old wrong I need to set right.” It seemed selfish to be quite so happy when, far away in France, Charles Davenant still didn’t know that his child had lived, had grown into a woman of character and conviction, loved and beloved. “Do you remember that story I was telling you about, that Mrs. Davenant told me?”

“Something about love despite the odds?” said Nathaniel, taking her left hand in his.

“Yes, that.” Taking strength from his touch, Emily took a deep breath and began, “A long time ago, there was a child who was born to a slave woman and hidden away. . . .”

Epilogue

Paris, France

November 1832

Edward Davenant stood in the Place des Vosges, the rain dripping off the edges of his hat onto the already soaked shoulders of his greatcoat.

His hands were frozen through. He blew on them to warm them. He really hadn’t expected it to be quite so cold. He’d known it wouldn’t be hot here, but the sheer bitterness of the weather had taken him by surprise. The raindrops were needles of ice, cutting through his clothes, chilling him to the bone.

Behind him, a beggar was giving him strange looks. Edward was tempted to slink away, but his empty wallet and the rain decided him.

“I’d like to see Mr. Charles Davenant, please,” he asked the concierge, speaking very slowly and clearly in what he had once thought was French, but it seemed wasn’t, or at least not if the reactions of the Frenchmen he’d met so far were anything to go by.

He had the uncomfortable feeling his grammar wasn’t quite right, but Charles Davenant was Charles Davenant was Charles Davenant in any language. Unless he’d changed his name? Edward began to have an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach, and not just because he hadn’t eaten anything since that highly suspicious stew last night.

This had been the address he’d found in his mother’s papers, he was sure of it.

“Charles Davenant?” he repeated, calculating the number of coins left in his pocket and the distance between a bed and the gutter.