“No, I’m quite alone,” Emmaline answered after a moment, feeling slightly dazed. When he’d taken her hand she’d felt a tingle of awareness skip up her arm, and knew she was disappointed that he had not kissed her hand. Which was ridiculous. It wasn’t as if someone had sent her the man as a birthday present, for goodness’ sake. Still, the image of him being presented to her, all tied up with a lovely satin bow, persisted in her traitorous brain. If this was what reaching the lofty age of eight and twenty got her, what would she be doing at thirty? Chasing men down the streets of the village? Shame on her!
His frown told her she had given him an answer he could not like. “Then perhaps your maid? A companion?”
Reluctantly, Emmaline brought her mind back to attention. “Captain Alastair, I don’t understand. I’m certainly past the age of needing a chaperone. Or have you come to the front door of Ashurst Hall and introduced yourself to my brother’s butler all with the intention of either robbing us or killing us, or both? If so, you may want to reconsider housebreaking as a way to make your way in the world now that the hostilities are a thing of the past.”
Had she really said all of that? Why, she was babbling, that’s what she was doing. But he looked so serious. So handsome and so serious. It seemed necessary to keep speaking, even babbling, so that he didn’t say what he had obviously come here to say. Something he would say that, it would seem, required that she have some other female conveniently on hand for the moment when she would either erupt in hysterics or faint dead away.
A sudden fear invaded her. “Has this to do with Rafe? My nephew, Captain Rafael Daughtry? He is with Wellington. But no, that can’t be it. For one, the hostilities are over. And you are a navy captain, and Rafe is with the—I’m sorry. I should stop asking questions and ask you to accompany me inside, shouldn’t I, as that is what it would seem you wish me to do?”
“That was another question,” Captain Alastair pointed out, not unkindly. “If I may?” He held out his arm to her, and she took it, suddenly believing she might need some sort of support.
Neither spoke as they made their way along the brick path to one of the many sets of French doors leading into the large formal saloon. The captain held open the door for her, and Emmaline stepped inside to see that not only was the silver tea service already set up on the table between the two couches near the center of the room, but that both Grayson and the housekeeper, Mrs. Piggle, were standing just outside the room, pretending not to be watching for her.
She shot them a look they both seemed to understand, and the double doors were closed. Not that Emmaline didn’t feel certain that both servants had stepped no more than an inch away from the doors. Knowing Mrs. Piggle, the woman was probably already down on her knees, one eye to the keyhole.
“This is about my brother, isn’t it?” Emmaline asked as she sat down and waited for the captain to take up his seat on the facing couch. “What have he and his sons done? Did they somehow ram and sink one of His Majesty’s boats? Has the Navy put them under arrest?”
“No, ma’am,” the captain said, reaching for the teapot. “May I?”
“Oh! I should have offered. I’m so sorry…yes, please do. Would you rather some wine?”
He looked across the table at her, those blue eyes unreadable. “I’m pouring the tea for you, ma’am. You might consider it a restorative, unless you’d rather a glass of wine. I’m afraid I’m the reluctant bearer of very sad news.”
“Yes, I believe I’ve rather sensed that, Captain Alastair. Please forgive me for attempting to delay delivery of this very sad news. I’m trying to keep my wits about me. Unfortunately, I believe I’m sadly failing at the effort. I’m imagining all sorts of things, none of them very palatable.”
“Then please allow me to say this as quickly as I can, and I apologize now for being so abbreviated. Lady Emmaline, it is my sad duty to inform you that your brother and his sons were lost at sea last evening off Shoreham-by-Sea. My own ship arrived on the scene just as the yacht was disappearing beneath the waves with all save one soul still onboard. I’m…I’m profoundly sorry
we could not save them.”
Emmaline sat very still. She may have breathed, but she couldn’t be sure. Her mind objected in the most ridiculous way: But it’s my birthday. Isn’t it just like them to do this to me on my birthday?
She twisted her hands in her lap, and then pinched herself, just to be sure she was awake, and not in the middle of a nightmare that incongruously somehow included a man best described as the perfect lover of her more pleasant dreams.
“Lady Emmaline? May I please summon someone now?”
She shook her head, unable to speak. She waited for the tears, but they didn’t come. In all, she felt rather numb. What had been the last words Charlton had said to her five days ago before climbing into his traveling coach behind George and Harold? Oh yes, she remembered. Make me a happy man, sister mine. Run off with one of the grooms before we get back!
Her nephews had laughed hard and long at their father’s joke. She could still hear them laughing as the coach moved off down the drive.
Emmaline snapped herself back to the moment at hand.
“Was…um, was there a storm?” She didn’t know why she asked this. But she felt it was something at least halfway sensible to say, something to break the oppressive silence.
“No, ma’am. Not anything I’d call a storm, at least. As I understand the thing from speaking with the survivor, a Mr. Hugh Hobart, the captain was intoxicated and belowdecks at the time, and one of your nephews was at the helm. Waves are powerful things, ma’am, even on a day that could only be called choppy from the wind along the Channel. Ride with the waves and you fly across the water. Hit one of them wrong, and even a sturdy ship can crack like an egg.”
He looked at her, wincing. “I’m sorry. That was stupidly clumsy of me. I shouldn’t say that the tragedy could be laid at your nephew’s door.”
“The yacht was a recent…acquisition. I can’t imagine what either George or Harold could have been thinking, to attempt to take the wheel like that. But that’s what this Mr. Hobart told you?”
The captain nodded. “The man was rather overset and unintelligible. But, yes, he said his friend Harold was at the helm. That is—was—one of your nephews, correct?”
Emmaline nodded, still waiting to cry. She should be crying, shouldn’t she? Clearly Captain Alastair believed she should be weeping, in need of comfort. She was an unnatural sister, that’s what she was, and an unnatural aunt.
Because all she could feel, of the little she seemed capable of feeling, was relief…
CHAPTER TWO
JOHN ALASTAIR WAS certain he’d felt more uncomfortable in his lifetime, but at the moment he could not recall anything that measured remotely close to the impotence he felt as he sat across from the bravely stoic Lady Emmaline Daughtry.