He stared at her, his skin unnaturally pale.
She rushed on again before she let herself say too much. “But none of that matters now. Whatever was between you and me is over, truly done.” She hugged her ribs even more tightly. “It’s probably better if you think I am a heartless, spoiled temptress. Keep thinking that, Nick, and leave me alone. Hate me, my lord, and regard me as a stranger, because that is all we can ever be.”
Before he had a chance to react, she turned and ran, her feet flying as if all the hounds of hell were nipping at her heels.
Chapter 18
“Princess Emmaline, another bouquet has arrived for you!”
Emma glanced up from her place on the drawing room sofa the following afternoon, the novel she had been pretending to read lying momentarily forgotten in her hands. She watched as one of her ladies-in-waiting carried a huge vase of pink hothouse roses into the room, the flowers’ sweet scent adding to the perfume of other fresh bouquets already adrift in the air.
“Who is this one from?” Sigrid inquired, tipping up her head from where she sat bent over her embroidery.
With their two blond heads, Emma imagined how she and her sister must look, like a pair of matched songbirds perched at opposite ends of the sofa.
Rupert completed the golden grouping, comfortably relaxed in a nearby chair. He held a carefully ironed copy of the London Gazette, the newspaper folded open to some article whose content clearly displeased him based on his periodic harrumphs of annoyance.
“The card says they are from His Grace, the Duke of Lymonton,” Baroness Zimmer said. “Quite some of the loveliest blossoms you have received today, Your Highness.”
The attractiveness of the duke’s floral offering notwithstanding, Emma frowned as she tried but failed to recall the man. For the life of her, she had no memory of him. Had he been the dark-haired one with the quizzing glass or the fellow with the wine stain on his cravat?
Or neither?
Truthfully, all the gentlemen she’d met last night had blurred together, each one more forgettable than the last.
The evening as a whole was a bit hazy, she realized, the only memorable moments those she had spent with Nick. Her encounters with him were emblazoned in her mind’s eye with excruciating clarity, each detail vivid and indelibly stamped upon her. If she lived to be a hundred, she knew she would still be able to recall every moment, be able to recite each word and relive the bittersweet glory of his kiss.
After parting from him, she’d gone to the ladies’ withdrawing room, where she’d composed herself enough to return to the ball—or so she thought. But after only ten minutes, she’d known she could not continue. She’d had no difficulty convincing Sigrid that she had a headache, her sister happy to call for the coach so they might return to the estate and nurse Emma’s megrim.
Once inside her bedchamber, Baroness Zimmer had offered Emma a sleeping draft, which she had been more than willing to take. But rather than being lulled into a deep slumber, she’d lain listless and miserable, unable to rest as tears slid wetly over her cheeks, unstoppable as a tide.
Sometime not long before dawn, she’d finally fallen into a doze, her dreams more troubled than her thoughts as her mind replayed her confrontation with Nick over and over again. Her memories of their embrace taunted her as well, letting her experience his touch once more before he was viciously snatched away.
She’d been wan and listless at breakfast, unable to eat more than a bite of toast and take a sip of tea. When Sigrid suggested calling a physician, however, she had forced herself to shake off the worst of her lethargy. A quiet day at home was all she required, she assured her sister. The excitement of the evening before had simply been too draining.
So there she sat with her siblings, acting as if she were reading when she’d really just been flipping the same two pages back and forth in an endless rhythm. It wasn’t as if she weren’t trying to read; she was. But each time she attempted to concentrate, the words would swim out of view and she would find herself thinking of Nick once again.
How he’d looked.
What he’d said.
And the way she’d run from him there at the last.
But he hadn’t followed, and she presumed he would not attempt to contact her again.
A shiver trailed over her skin like an icy breath as she remembered his shock, his rage. He’d been livid, the look in his eyes one that would have made a grown man quake with fright. But she’d held her own, refusing to be bullied or intimidated.
And she’d told him the truth, even if he had not cared to hear it.
But none of that had mattered. Maybe it was for the best that he despised her now, just as she’d said, because for them there could be no happy future.