Worse, if she had meant to leave all along, had she always intended to make her exit without saying good-bye in person? Without giving him a chance to talk to her, to convince her not to go?
Again, her actions made no sense to him whatsoever.
As for the closeness he’d thought they shared, had he been so very wrong about that? Had he misread her emotions so completely that he’d mistaken gratitude for affection? Lust for love?
But then he remembered her face last night when they’d lain together, the lambent glow of joy that had shone from her hyacinth-hued eyes, her soft lips parted on a smile of such happiness that there had been no mistaking the honesty of her emotions—of her love.
Folding the note in sharp halves, he tucked it inside his coat pocket, then stalked from the room.
Well, she could try to hide but he would find her, and once he did, they would talk this through, whatever this might turn out to be.
He meant to make her his wife, and by God, that is what she would become.
“I am sorry, but the missus isn’t receiving at the moment,” the maid at the Brown-Jones town house told Nick an hour later as he stood on the doorstep. The servant was the same one who had answered the door on that other occasion when he and Emma had called here—the first day they’d met in the market in Covent Garden nearly three weeks ago.
“She will receive me,” Nick informed her in a no-nonsense tone. “Inform her that Lord Lyndhurst wishes to speak with her on important business.” He thrust out a calling card.
The maid’s eyes widened at the mention of his name before she took the stiff rectangle of vellum on which his name was printed in simple yet refined letters. She stared at it for a long moment, making him wonder if she could read.
“Whall…” she drawled, looking up again from the card, “don’t know as that’ll make no difference. She were mighty firm about not wantin’ to entertain no callers today.”
Was that because Emma had taken refuge inside?
Was she waiting somewhere upstairs even now?
“I am not an ordinary caller,” he insisted. “I am certain your mistress will see me,” he said.
And if she wouldn’t, he would find some method of changing her mind. Once he had, he would see Emma as well.
Taking another step forward, he caught the door in his hand and gave a small push. The girl released it immediately, moving several paces backward into the entry hall.
“I shall wait here while you go fetch her,” he stated.
He shut the door at his back.
She sent him a disapproving look, but spun around without further comment and hurried up the staircase, his card clutched inside her grasp.
He wanted to follow, but resisted the impulse. He would see Emma soon enough, he assured himself.
Linking his hands behind his back, he walked a few steps to the right then retraced them. He found the action soothing—a familiar habit from his years spent pacing the deck of his ship. The biggest difference now was that the floor in this house didn’t roll and pitch like his old bridge and the air wasn’t moist with the sweet-sharp tang of brine.
Less than five minutes passed before he heard footsteps and looked up to see a different woman coming down the stairs. Attired in a plain but pleasant gown of figured amber silk, she appeared to be in her early to mid-thirties. Her face was pleasant, attractive without being overly handsome.
She had, he noted, a pair of very direct grayish green eyes that were deep-set in her long, thin face. She fixed those eyes on him as she came to a halt at the bottom of the stairs. “Lord Lyndhurst, I presume?”
He made her a short bow. “And you must be Mrs. Brown-Jones. Thank you for receiving me, since I understand you are not at home to callers today.”
One of her medium brown eyebrows lifted at his slight impertinence, the movement offering hints of her former profession as a schoolteacher. “No, I am not. But according to my maidservant, you were most insistent on seeing me. She feared you might barge up the stairs were I not to descend posthaste.”
Her maid wasn’t mistaken, though Nick decided he did not need to confirm their suspicions. “I am here—”
“Oh, I know why you are here,” she interrupted with gentle understanding. “Which is precisely why I wished to delay this interview. But it cannot be helped, I suppose.” She sighed, then motioned him toward a nearby door. “Pray follow me into the drawing room, my lord, and we shall speak further.”
There was a brusque practicality in Mrs. Brown-Jones’s voice that once again reminded him of her former profession as a teacher. But he was in no mood to act the part of schoolboy; he was long past such strictures.