Drawing a shaky breath, Emma leaned forward and raised the cup to her lips. The warm brew slid soothingly down her throat, easing away a little of the strained roughness created by her tears.
Mercedes and Ariadne patiently looked on.
“Aren’t you having any?” Emma croaked.
After exchanging a look, her friends picked up their cups and drank.
“Biscuit?” Mercedes suggested.
Emma shook her head, then lowered her gaze to her lap.
“I presume your unhappiness has something to do with the time you spent in London without your brother’s consent,” Ariadne said.
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t really stay with Miss Poole, did you?”
Emma’s eyes widened, dually amazed and exasperated by her friends’ perception. “Not the entire time, no.”
“Well, then,” Ariadne said, her satisfaction apparent. “What is his name and how did the two of you meet?”
Emma’s lips parted, then closed again. “How did you know?”
Ariadne and Mercedes shared another knowing glance. “We had a great deal of time to speculate whilst in the coach,” Mercedes said almost apologetically. “It was the only thing that made any sense.”
“Leave it to the two of you to figure all that out from my letter. And here I thought I’d been so careful not to reveal anything alarming,” Emma said.
“You should know by now that it’s fruitless trying to hide your feelings from us.” Ariadne gave her a reproving look. “Besides, you’ve never been good at dissembling. We know you too well for such nonsense.”
Emma nodded. Ariadne was right. They did know her inside and out. Perhaps she’d written to them for just that reason.
So they would realize she was miserable.
So they would ask her about it.
“His name is Nick,” Emma said. “And we met the day I ran away.”
Over the next half hour, Emma poured out the entire story, telling them everything that had happened—or rather nearly everything. There were two things she refused to share, even with her dearest friends.
The first was Nick’s title and family name. No good could be served by revealing his full identity, she decided. It made no difference to the telling of her tale. All that mattered was that he was not of royal blood.
Second, she said nothing about giving her virginity to him. What had happened on that last night between them was intimate, special, and to speak of it seemed wrong. She also worried that Mercedes in particular might think less of her for lying with a man who was not her husband.
Mercedes put great stock in institutions such as marriage. She had spoken in the past about the sanctity of wedding vows and how she hoped to find a communion of the souls with her future mate. Mercedes, Emma well knew, would never even dream of going to her marriage bed anything but pure and would be shocked if she knew that Emma would.
Ariadne, on the other hand, had no such scruples. She had once confided to Emma that she found the notion of taking a lover vastly exciting. Marriage was nothing but a prison, she declared, and she had no interest in becoming one of its inmates.
Ariadne had gone on to astonish her further by revealing that she saw no reason to forgo the physical pleasures to be enjoyed with a man. If she was careful, she believed she could find someone intriguing who would be willing to initiate her. Considering the lack of males under the age of sixty at the academy, however, Emma assumed Ariadne was still looking.
And so, when it came to her having made love with Nick, Emma held her tongue—although she wondered once she finished if Ariadne suspected she had left something out. There was a gleam in the other girl’s bright green eyes that was far too knowing.
But Ariadne didn’t press and she didn’t volunteer anything more.
“It’s obvious what you must do,” Ariadne declared once she had fallen silent. “You must tell your brother that you cannot marry King Otto.”
Emma stared. “That’s impossible.”
“Of course it is not. Just go to him and say you’ve changed your mind. Surely he will release you if you explain.”
“Explain what?” Emma said, setting down her teacup with a clink. “That I’m in love with another man? A man I’m not even supposed to have met? Someone my family would never let court me. Rupert would be furious. He would…” Her voice grew quiet. “He would probably disown me.”
“All the better,” Ariadne declared. “Then you can marry Nick.”
“No, I can’t. For one, I am underage and require Rupert’s consent, which he will never give. For another, Nick doesn’t want me. I think he… hates me now.”