Talk of the Ton (Free Fellows League 5)

The next morning, she didn’t even feel nervous. This was not the game. The game would start when she moved herself to London, to her sister’s house, in one week. This was merely the prelude.

Her maid wound her hair into a circle of braids and pulled a few curls loose to bob at her ears. Emma’s fingers were absolutely steady as she put discreet emeralds at her ears and buttoned the small buttons on one of Madame Maisonnat’s military-inspired gowns. She was a general in a campaign of great importance.

Finally she looked at herself in the mirror. Of course, he might recognize her. She had not worn a mask in the darkness of the carriage, nor again in the darkness of the theater. But she didn’t think he would. She was forming the impression that the Earl of Kerr was a man who drifted from woman to woman, not examining them very closely. After all, he accepted her tale of Emelie.

No, he probably wouldn’t recognize her. Context was important, and the great charm of Madame Maisonnat’s gown had nothing to do with an exuberant show of bosom. This was not the dress of a sparkling, glittering Frenchwoman, but that of a steady, responsible Englishwoman, prepared to dissolve her betrothal with an offer of guarded friendship and an acknowledgment of mutual disinclination to commit matrimony based on their fathers’ wishes.

He was waiting in her sitting room whe

n she entered, so she gestured to the butler to close the doors without announcing her. He stood by the window overlooking the long sweep of the lawn to the apple orchard. For a moment she just feasted on the line of his thigh, the hair curling at his neck, the impatient click of his crop against his boots.

He was very dear to her. Surprisingly so, she had to acknowledge.

“Lord Kerr,” she said coolly, holding out her hand as she came toward him, “it is indeed a pleasure to see you.”

He turned around. Her heart stopped. But—nothing happened.

He showed no signs of recognizing Emelie. Instead, he bowed and took her hand, raising it to his lips as politely as if she were a matron of long acquaintance. “I can only apologize for my overly prolonged absence, Miss Loudan.”

She inclined her head with just the right amount of steady, impersonal acceptance. “Won’t you sit down, my lord?” She walked over to a settee, but rather than sitting in the chair that she indicated with a wave of her hand, he sat down just beside her. Every atom in her body sprang to life at his scent, at his closeness, at the dearness of him.

“So you would like to annul our engagement?” he enquired.

She pushed away the black flood of disappointment in her heart as firmly as she could. She could think about that later. She knew her beloved’s shortcomings when it came to remembering his amorous adventures; there could be nothing new in the idea that she was no more novel than any other woman.

She nodded. “I think it would be best.” She opened her reticule and took out the elaborate ring that his father had sent her father as a sign of their agreement. He opened his hand without hesitation, and she dropped it onto his palm. She didn’t trust herself to touch his fingers, even in passing.

“I must say, I am grateful,” he said. “I wished to tell you this in person, Miss Loudan. Although as a man of honor, I would never have ended our betrothal, I do wish to marry another. I have lost my heart, foolish though that sounds. And so I am grateful for your decision.”

“We should never have suited,” she said quickly, because a black wave was threatening to pull her under and send her crying from the room. “Child betrothals are a relic of the past.”

“True,” he said, smiling genially. “Of course, the Elizabethans liked such things and found them useful.”

“Quite.”

“I am inordinantly fond of Elizabethan customs,” he said, obviously making conversation to cover the awkward fact that they, who had been betrothed to each other for years, had nothing to say.

“Indeed,” Emma murmured, wondering where her father was. He had promised that he would come into the room and soothe the whole process. Of course, he had probably decided to reread some article on the diet of baboons and quite forgotten that Kerr was coming.

“Almost as much as I love the customs of the French,” he said.

Emma’s brows pulled together. This was a bit much! Not only did he make a laughingstock of himself and her all over London, with his Gallic obsessions, but he dared to throw it in her face.

“I have heard as much,” she said stiffly.

“So, you truly wish to dissolve our betrothal?” he said.

“Even more so now that I hear you wish to marry,” she noted, her voice still chill.

“She is a darling,” he said pensively. “I do wish that the two of you could meet. I feel as if we have known each other for years, you and I, although we have infrequently met.”

She ground her teeth and thought cruel thoughts about her father. “Quite so,” she said.

“Will you be coming to London?”

“Naturally,” she said. “I shall come for the remainder of the season.” If he were a man of any conscience at all, he would know that his discarded fiancée would be desperate to find another husband. Except that at four and twenty she was decayed beyond all hope, as Bethany had said.

“I shall introduce you,” he said with perfect sangfroid. “She is French; I’m afraid that I have a weakness for women of the Gallic persuasion.”