"You are to read, Emily," he said softly. "You are to read to me."
* * *
Emilie stood rigidly against a column of the back portico, staring straight ahead into the dark gardens of the hotel. They were bringing around a carriage for her, to convey her back to the station for her supposed train to . . . well, wherever it was. York, probably.
Her insides were still trembling; her fingers were cold inside her gloves.
He was still up in the room, the Duke of Ashland. If she looked upward, she might perhaps see a crack of light through one of the windows, the window of the room where they had sat together. Where he had undressed her to her chemise, with his broad, firm hand; where she had read to him, taking little sips of sherry to fortify herself, while he sat behind her and watched and listened.
Her skin still burned from the knowledge of his gaze. Shame, or desire?
Shame, surely. What had possessed her to stay and submit to him? Expose herself to him? He had told her she might go. She should have left without another thought, innocence intact.
Emilie looked down at her gloved hands, twined together against her shapeless black coat. He had said good-bye courteously. He had rung for Mrs. Scruton, and when the soft knock had sounded on the door, he had taken Emilie's hand, removed her glove, and kissed the inside of her wrist. His lips, his warm, firm lips, had actually touched her skin.
She could feel his kiss still, sizzling against her sleeve.
A rattle sounded, a crisp hoofbeat. Emilie straightened herself and stepped forward.
"Madam!"
Behind her, the door opened in a hurried crash. "Madam!" came the call again, more clearly.
She turned.
Mrs. Scruton swept from the doorway, holding out her hand. "Oh, thank goodness ye've never left. There's a note, from t'gentleman."
"Thank you." Emilie plucked the folded paper from the housekeeper's hand. "Does he . . . does he wait for a reply?"
"He didn't say, madam." Mrs. Scruton's voice was deeply respectful. A wisp of hair fell away from her cap; she looked disordered, as if she'd been put to a mad rush.
"Thank you, Mrs. Scruton. That will be all." Emilie slipped the paper into her coat pocket. The carriage lurched to a stop before the portico, and a footboy jumped from the back to hand her in.
The carriage was unlit. Emilie waited until they reached the station; she waited until the carriage had left so she could trudge down the side streets to the Anvil and change clothes; she waited until she stood inside the dim stable while they brought her horse out from his stall for the lonely ride back to Ashland Abbey.
There, under a swinging lantern, with the wind already moaning at the windows, she reached into her pocket and drew out the contents: the folded paper and a plain white envelope.
The envelope contained five crisp Bank of England ten-pound notes, still smelling faintly of printers' ink.
Fifty pounds! That was six months' salary for Tobias Grimsby, and a generous salary at that. What the devil was she to do with it?
Emilie thrust the envelope back in her pocket and opened the note.
Madam,
I am deeply sensible of the honor you have done me this evening. Do I ask too much, if I find insupportable the idea of waiting an entire month to have that honor renewed? You need return no reply. I shall be waiting, and hoping, Tuesday next.
In the meantime, I wish you a happy and prosperous Christmas.
Yours,
A.B.
NINE
Lord Silverton crossed his arms, cocked his head, and studied the Christmas tree through narrow eyes. "As a work of engineering, it leaves something to be desired."
Emilie, nineteen feet high on a ladder that might have been used to defend Ashland Abbey from the agents of Henry VIII, reached across the prickling boughs to nudge the extravagant gold star into a more dignified stance. "It's not a work of engineering," she said. "It's a Christmas tree. A festive . . . symbol of . . ."
"I say, I should rather watch that ladder, if I were you . . ."
". . . the season . . . a German tradition, in fact . . ."
". . . rather a dodgy reputation, that ladder, truth be told . . ."
". . . you've perhaps heard ‘O Tannenbaum,' which . . . hold on, I've almost . . . nearly . . ."
". . . nearly came to a bad end myself last . . . oh, mind the . . ."
The ladder tottered and fell to one side in a long and graceful arc, leaving Emilie clinging to the upper branches.
". . . candle," finished Freddie. "Are you all right?"
"Quite all right," said Emilie, "if you don't think the tree will overbalance."
"I daresay it might, I'm afraid. Already listing."
"Then perhaps," Emilie said, between her teeth, which were stuck with pine needles, "you might possibly set the ladder back upright for my convenience in . . . disembarking this . . . very festive symbol of the season."
"Can't do it, I'm afraid," Freddie called up. "It's come all apart. Poor old thing. Deserved a better fate."
Emilie's sweating palms slipped along the fragile bark. "Try."
"No. No, it's no good," Freddie said cheerfully. "How's this: I'll just pop around to the other side of the tree, hold on like mad, and you can descend at your leisure."
Emilie risked a peep at the white marble floor beneath her. Far beneath her.
The tree shifted.
"Well, then," said Freddie, "since you're determined to dig in for the long haul, as it were, could I perhaps send you up a cup of punch? Eggnog, perhaps?"
Emilie searched for the trunk with her feet. "Your lordship, I don't believe you properly perceive the urgency of the situation."
"Won't Father Christmas have a jolly laugh when he spots you tonight! Bowl full of jelly and all that. Ha-ha!"
"Frederick . . ."
"You know, you remind me rather of a cat just now. If you would only move your limbs, Mr. Grimsby, I could guide you down, branch by branch, like a member of the fire brigade."
"How kind."
"Look, there's a fine stout branch just below your left foot, and . . . Oh, steady on . . ."
The tree groaned. A splitting noise came from the branch to which Emilie's right hand clung.
It had seemed like such a sturdy tree before. It had been brought down specially from Scotland last week, a noble, well-proportioned fir, fully twenty-five feet high and positioned right under the stained glass cupola in the center of the Ashland Abbey ballroom. It dwarfed even the magnificent trees her father had had cut down from the Schweinwald every year and placed in the castle's audience chamber, aglow with candles and tinsel.
Surely such a tree would prove impervious to a single modestly proportioned female clinging to its upper reaches.
Emilie grabbed another branch, which gave way at once. She grabbed for the trunk, feeling more like a monkey than a cat. The odious golden star, the cause of all this mischief, tipped away from its perch and tumbled into the thicket of needles and tinsel below.
The tree swayed. It shifted. Emilie's world began to tilt.
"Mr. Grimsby!" shrieked a voice from the doorway. A metallic crash followed, then the instant smash of porcelain, all of it promptly drowned out by the sirenlike wails of Lucy going into hysterics.
"Now, now," said Freddie. "He's quite all right, the sturdy fellow. We must simply encourage him to jump."
"Jump!" wailed Lucy.
"Jump!" squeaked Emilie.
"Jump," Freddie said decisively. "Far better than letting the tree come down on top of you."
The tree tilted another foot or two. "But the floor's marble!" said Emilie.
"All the more reason to jump first, before the tree jolly well falls on top of you, crushing you mercilessly into all that marble. Come on, now. Buck up."
"Ooh! Ooh! I can't never look!" said Lucy.
Emilie glanced back down at the endless blue-veined marble below, gleaming in the light from the two magnificent ballroom chandeliers. "I'd like to see you buck up, if you were perched up here."
"Come along, then, Mr. Grimsby! Nothing to it. You'll land on your feet, likely as not."
Lucy's shrieks reached an entirely new register of panic. "Ooh! I shall die! Ooh, Mr. Grimsby! I'm sure I can't never look. His poor brains are being to be scrambled. Who will be cleaning it all up?"
The tree moved again. Emilie swung backward; the branches now loomed above her as she clung with arms and legs. Rather like a hammock on a summer's day, she told herself. Except that hammocks did not have stomachs.
"Ooh, t'Lord save us all! He shall be kilt!"
"Perhaps a pleasant, well-padded sofa might persuade you to take the plunge, so to speak. Lucy, would you mind giving that delightfully impressive caterwauling an instant's pause, and help me . . ."